July 27, 2015
Truckee, CA
Donner Memorial State Park
9pm Pacific ST, 7pm CST

Hi everyone!  Well, the last 2 days have been looooooong, but fun.  Met my brother Greg at North Platte about 3pm on Sunday.  Thanks Mom and Dad for bringing him up there!

Our first adventure was to Panorama Pt, the high spot in NE at 5424 ft.  It is out in the sticks south and west ok Kimball.

Then we just kept going west on 80 theough Wyoming and Utah.  We finally pulled into a rest area at 4am and slept until 6am.  When we woke up it was starting to grow light and we couldn't figure out the "lake" we were looking at.  We then realized it was a salt flat, the first one I have ever seen.  We stopped right by the Bonneville Salt Flats!  They were so cool looking.

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Nevada was just long, not exciting.
When we reached Truckee, we filled up with 4 dollar gas and headed around the lake.  We left boxes of food for us to pick up when we hiked by later in Tahoe City and at the KOA in South Tahoe Lake.  Here is a pic of Emerald Bay, a very photographed area of the Lake.  It was amazingly beautiful!

A remarkable thing happened as we hunted for the KOA.  I knew we were close, but pulled into a parking lot to call them for directions.  As we pulled onto a spot Greg said, "Hey, theres a 8 county Nebraska car".  It was nose to nose with ours.  I said, "I bet I know who that is!"  Greg naturally said, "Yeah right".  I pulled out my phone and called Kirk Shuck.  Someone told me last Sunday that he and his family were at Lake Tahoe and jokingly added, "maybe you'll run into each other". Well, we were in the parking lot of the Lake Tahoe Golf Course, and Kirk was out playing on that very course!   Wow!  We had a good laugh at God's sense of humor.  

We went on around the east side of the lake to see where we will start tomorrow and then hid 4 gallons of water in the middle of a long dry section of trail for us to pick up on Aug 6 when we hike by.  Then supper in Truckee and its time for bed.  Oh, every tent site has a big, heavy metal bear box.  We were told to put all food, soap, shampoo, lotion etc in it for tonight.  Out here they have been known to break into buildings and cars going after food!  Another night, I will show you the Bear Keg we have along to store our food at night.  

Thats all for tonight.  I'm tired.  We've driven 1600 miles so far since noon on Sunday.  I broke my old personal record for number of miles driven in a 24 hr period.  I drove 1280 yesterday, and 1540 of all the miles.  Greg was super tired so only drove one hour.  THAT is going to change on the way home!

More to come tomorrow.  Stay tuned and tell a freind you think might be interested in our adventure.  Love all of you!

Mike

July 25, 2015

Less than 24 hours!  Hard to believe this adventure is almost here.  I thought I'd post some fun facts about Lake Tahoe and the trail around it.  First the Trail.

The idea of the Tahoe Rim Trail was proposed in 1978 and the trail itself was completed in 2001.  It is 165 miles long (some places say it's 170 miles long).  The lowest point of the trail crosses the Truckee River at an altitude of 6225 feet above sea level.  The highest point of the trail is Relay Peak at 10,338 feet.  Hiking all 165 miles means a total of 24,400 feet elevation gain/loss.

At 6225 feet elevation, Lake Tahoe is the highest alpine lake in North America and has some of the purest water in the world.  It is a big lake, 21 x 12 miles, with a depth of 1645 ft.  It is the 2nd deepest lake in the U.S. behind Crater Lake in Oregon.  It is the 6th largest lake (after the five Great Lakes) and if its water was spread out, it would cover the entire state of California 14 inches deep.  There are 63 streams flowing into it and only one river flowing out, the Truckee River by Tahoe City on the northwest edge of the lake.

Greg and I are going to camp in the Donner Memorial State Park on Monday, July 27, just outside of Truckee, CA.  Present day Truckee is near where the Donner-Reed Party, a group of Morman emigrants heading west tried to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains late in the fall of 1846.  A blizzard left them stranded for much of the winter in 1846-47.  It was not a pretty story.  Of the original 87 members, only 48 reached California with many of those who died being eaten by the others to stay alive.  

It's not surprising they were caught in a blizzard.  The average annual snow fall in Truckee is 205 inches, with the single season record being 444 inches!  We will see several ski resorts along the trail.  Squaw Valley, CA (home of the 1960 Winter Olympics) is probably the most well known.

I'm leaving after church tomorrow and picking up Greg in North Platte.  On the way west, we're going to drive clear to the top of the highest point in Nebraska.  At 5424 feet, Panorama Point, southwest of Kimball, is a breath-taking vista.  Ok, as you can see from the picture, it's not really all that breath taking, but it IS almost 200 feet higher then Denver.  Pretty cool huh?  Stay tuned for many more interesting little tidbits to numb your brain in the days ahead!  Thanks for checking in today.

Mike

Here is what our bedroom looked like a few days ago when I was sorting out my gear.  It is not quite so bad now.  Out of great chaos comes a great adventure!

One week from today!

One week from today, my brother Greg and I will be driving west through Nevada on I-80, arriving at Tahoe City by late morning.  We're going to meet in North Platte Sunday afternoon and drive through the night.  Ugh!  But, we want to get out there and get the adventure started.