Day 3 - California. Still

We managed an aggressive departure this morning, fulfilling a 645am wake up call (an unheard of practice for both of us under normal circumstances) and check out one hour and fifteen minutes later. Sianora Tuolumne Meadows!

This was our first camp breakdown of this trip, and it was crisp and efficient - nearly textbook save for some technical difficulties involving storage of certain sleeping articles which have been noted for adjustment in subsiquent teardowns.

Our millitary style exit strategy was largley due to concerns about meeting a deadline in Lake Tahoe (and not with 'national security' or 'spreading democracy') as other "millitary exit strategies" are concerned with. However our journey to said designation was met with more leisurley stops than hurried excitement. This was fine by us cause the drive was incredible! There was a lot to see and of course April took lots and lots of pictures on her leica. One especially memorable landmark on this drive was in a town called Topaz (pop. 100) where we were lucky enough to spot two celebrity residents; a bald eagle and a California Condor! Or at least that's what we thought we were looking at, but they looked preoccupied with flying around so we thought it impolite to stop and ask them.

Tahoe has everything you'd expect from a posh resort town, including a very big and im told, very very deep lake. And we had plenty of time before our appointment to amble around and check it out. We had a chance to see some local art. I liked this painting:






How majestic

OK, enough of this stuff, we have a date with adventure and I'll be darned if we miss it on account of some wimpy paintings.

The gondolas took us to the top of heavenly where there were many great views.














Man those are some handsome shoes and comfortable too!

Here are some from the observation deck:







Time to have some zipline fun, but first April needs some liquid courage.







Now that that's taken care of....












weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!






Who needs an mfa when you have this sweet baby.

We've spent enough time in California, and so I think it's time to have a looksie at some different states. Nevada is right next door so why not.






It seems like green hair is vougue right now in the silver state. We went through the state capital of Carson city where we were interested enough to look it up on wikipedia but not quite enough to get out and see it for ourselves. Did you know that Carson city is the smallest municipal capital city in the us? Niether did we and it only has 52,000 resident - none of which are bald eagles or condors as far as we could tell. Reno was next and we pulled off because I wanted a haircut-maybe one of those green doo's we saw earlier, but when we got there fantastic sams was closed so we kept moving.

The lava bed national monument is next on the itinerary. We are going to be getting in there late so we stop for some chow in Susanville Ca a small logging town that built a prison to help it's economy - thanks again wikipedia. We ate at the black bear cafe for no particular reason here's me searching the options:







I'll take a pattymelt please.
But we were a little diisapointed to find that my relatives owned an eatery out here.





We could have gotten a discount!


The next leg is 3 hours long and in the dark and I mean dark dark. We can see as far as our high beams permit and the stars peppered throughout the sky but everything else is abyss. To make matters worse there is so much wildlife running across the highway you'd think we were driving through a petting zoo.
Here are just a few of the creatures we saw on the way to the lava beds monument:

Deer (tons of deer)
1 black angus
1 fox
1 coyote
Bunnies
Jack rabbits
Squirrels & chipmunks
Mice

But we made it! Here she is setting up the tent at midnight:








Goodnight!



-- Post From Sean's iPhone