Our Excursion: 20241019: Tahoe, Day 3 – Highway Hike
(Part of trip: 202410: Tahoe Trip – Marathon and More! )
Date of our excursion: 2024-10-19
Location: DL Bliss State Park
Our Planned Itinerary:
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Travelers on this Excursion: |
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We hit some cool places.
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Continents: North America |
Some featured areas we visited: |
Some points of interest we hit: |
Today we wake up and are ready for a feast! As the crowds arrive to the main room, they are all astounded by the plethora of delicious foods: hashbrown/sausage/etc casserole, apple pumpkin muffins, mandarin orange chocolate chip muffins, oranges, eggs, granola, yoghurt, coffee cake, lemon blueberry loaf, and so much more! Everyone who wants coffee gets to try the experimentations of drip-coffee-making newbies Kristin and Wesley. No one spit it out so maybe it was ok??? ha.. We all eat to our hearts’ content and headed to the beach for some cornhole and sand-village building. Wesley and Erika worked on building a village to withstand the ocean tides. Kelsey and Sterling played cornhole and Kristin kept score. Kristin made up her own scoring rules until she was schooled by Ashley the expert on the proper way to score cornhole. Kelsey tried to distract Sterling with a steady barrage of questions.
All the runners and were-going-to-be-runners headed to the expo to pick up packets, grab some swag, and hopefully learn about the new marathon course. Some of the non-runners decided to play a few rounds of Telestrations. This is quite a hilarious game. Then it was out to the beach again to rebuild the sand village. This time the village got motes and multiple walls. It fared mostly successfully against the ocean, but one by one the builders, chilly and a bit wet, decided to head into the warm room.
In preparation for the hike, we start mass producing sandwiches. We get a few requests but mostly just make whatever we want in our fervor to generate 20 or so sandwiches. Finally, we get enough sandwiches made, pack a ton of Jonah’s free costco water bottles, and head out to Cascade Falls. Well, spoiler alert, Bryan was right when he said the parking would be a nightmare! The place we planned to park was closed. Cars were parked precariously on the roadside and people were walking on the tiny shoulder. This does not seem safe or fun. We hate crowds and getting run over by cars. So, we keep driving until we spot an interesting looking parking lot. It is by DL Bliss state park. The park is closed. 🙁 BUT there are other cars parked here so there must be something available. We decide that if nothing else, we’ll just wander around in the forest and go bouldering. Fortunately, we meet a local who has just returned to his car and he gives us the inside scoop. Go around the gate, walk down until you see some buildings, take a sharp right, and you will meet the official trail. Ok, sure, let’s do what this guy says. But he also warned us to be careful crossing the street – the most dangerous part of the whole hike! We look both ways and run across the street, up the hill, and into the forest.
It is a nice downhill hike down the closed road. Some people find a portapotty that was just cleaned yesterday! The portapotty is still on the trailer but they use it anyway. Why not? better than the trees… 😀
Eventually, we meet up with the official trail and decide to go right. It’s all downhill still so we keep walking. Some of the group are hoping for a sandwich break, but they don’t get one until we arrive at a view point. This view point is great for sandwich eating and some bouldering!
After the sandwich break, a few vote to head back uphill to preserve leg strength for the marathon. Some veto that idea but are ignored. ha! On the way back up, we take a shortcut trail straight uphill to avoid the road switchbacks. It does cut a lot of time out. We also decide on a nice horror movie to make so we can all get rich and retire. Some of us practice our roles in this movie. I think it will be a hit. 😀
Of course we stop at the trailer potty again before the drive back. It’s fairly clean for a portapotty and even has water in the hand washing tank, which requires some foot pumping to generate water flow. It’s funny to watch cause the whole portapotty building shakes back and forth as you have to violently foot-pump the water button to get a small squirt of water to come out of the faucet. After that fun, we head back to the cars, pile in, and take the scenic but slow drive back. You have to go slow because the cars parked to the side of the road often cross the white line in a dangerous fashion. There is also a steady flow of people walking up and down the road to their vehicles that they parked very far from their destination.
This turned out to be a great hike. There were other people on the trail but since the park was closed, the trail was fairly empty and we had some solitude. The trail we originally intended to go on would have been insanely busy and swamped!
Now we are back and some are preparing our spaghetti feast! This will be delicious!