What a contrast over two days. This year, to try and get across the desert that spans the country between the major mountain ranges, the Rockies and the Sierras, I took a route across central Nevada from Salt Lake City to Reno, stopping briefly for a night in Elko. Always fun for a night or two, but always fun to get back to the Mountains. 

It is a different world from one day to the next in this part of the country. To avoid the heat, we like to take advantage of the cheap casinos in the small towns that litter the Nevada desert. We stayed for one wild night at Circus Circus, partying it up like mad men before returning to relative peace and comfort of the trees. From circus to camp, my kids have become pretty adaptive. 

Lake Tahoe is an adventurers dream, there is not a person within fifty miles that is not trying to partake in some outdoor activity. I’m jealous of every one. Boaters and four wheelers will find a home here as much as people seeking pure wilderness and white water. What you won’t find here is solitude, the secret of Tahoe has been out long enough that they have made it super accessible and commercialized, but I don’t mean for that to be a negative. Crowds can be fun, but this allows for people who otherwise avoid wilderness to fulfill any adventure of their dreams. The near-by river is an endless highway of rafts side by side with hardly space to turn or breathe. All of this because of the endless beauty, the tall sugar pines and cedars competing for my attention with the endless lakes and streams and the trails to see them. I don’t mind a crowd, I can have fun with others, and so, fun we had. 

We stayed at Sugar Pine Point State Park which is one of the calmer corners of the lake. We enjoyed a night around the fire, an early morning hike, and a day spent swimming at the lake. 

When we arrived, I had to listen to a speech on bear safety before signing and promising that I knew how to deal with bears and that if they break in to my bus I will be fined. I consider myself a fairly seasoned and diverse camper who camps in bear territory often, but I have never seen this kind of warning. We removed all food items from the bus as a precaution and filled the bear box. 

Walking back from a healthy tooth brushing at dusk when we hear the camper next to us yell bear. As is pertinent, I picked up maple and we stood calmly yelling, go away bear! It worked, as always, and the large black bear trotted off…. Toward the bus. Did I lock it? We were just walking to the bathroom, surely I didn’t lock it, ugh. I watched in horror as the bear approached the bus took a sniff then… moved on to our sleeping neighbors car/tent. Another neighbor got out an air horn and the bear ran off. When the sleeping neighbors woke up in the morning and I explained what happened he laughed as he told me he was mad at whatever kids were playing with an air horn so late when he was trying to sleep. I’m so glad we took the warning seriously, the kids mess up the bus enough without some 500 pound beast to help. 

Tomorrow we will actually need to return down to the desert for one more day to restock, but before the evening we will head back into the Sierra Nevada Mountains and find some free government land to stay on for a night before our highlight; four nights in Yosemite.