We’ve also heard for quite some time that everyone is leaving California. Don’t know about that but all those that hadn’t left were in Lake Tahoe for the week. It was slam, cram, jam packed with people and cars. Hated driving in the traffic and waiting almost an hour for something to eat but was happy to see the economy going full speed. That part will hopefully continue.
Sleepy little getaway town or booming modern city the one thing that did not change is how beautiful the lake is. Crystal clear and blue, blue blue. So clear they say you can read the label on a beer can fifty feet under the water. Under water or not, I would just like to read anything from fifty feet away.
The Tamarak forest fire was just south of Lake Tahoe, was zero percent contained and growing fast. On days the wind was blowing north smoke in the valley was quite an issue. The last two days we were there the air was unhealthy to breathe and visibility was sometimes to less than a quarter mile. The good news was we had four days where the wind was blowing away from the valley, the weather and visibility was great. It’s just too bad California has to have so many bad fires every year.
One day we took a boat ride across Tahoe to Emerald Bay and toured Vikingsholm Castle. Vikingsholm was built on the shore of Lake Tahoe by Lora Knight in 1928 after she purchased a little over 200 acres on Emerald Bay from the William Henry Armstrong family for $250,000. She and her husband had made their fortune trading stocks and buying companies then reselling them and continued to prosper until her death in 1945 when she was worth an estimated 40 million dollars.
Mrs Knight loved Swedish architecture, hired a Swedish architect to design and build her summer dream home under her personal direction. She lived the rest of the year in Santa Barbara and was very forward thinking in her business and personal life.
She funded Charles Lindbergh and his spirit of St Louis for his historic solo flight across the Atlantic to France. She employed twelve domestics that traveled between Santa Barbara and Lake Tahoe with her and furnished each of them a private bedroom with a full bath, unheard of in those days. She paid them well above the normal pay scale for domestic help in the day. She paid for each employee’s children college educations and paid for all their health care. She had one employee that stayed at Vikingsholm year round and furnished him a beautiful three bedroom, two bath home built into the Vikingsholm complex. Winters in the Lake Tahoe region can be brutal. When she died in 1945 she left each employee $1,000 for each year they had been in her service. Very few domestic jobs paid a thousand dollars a year back then.
Vikingsholm has about 5,000 square feet on the ground floor and has a total of 38 rooms, a second and third story, more than a full basement and covered tunnels that can access any part of the property year round. Each guest was furnished a private bedroom with a full bath, was fed breakfast and dinner and was required to dress for all meals. Each morning before breakfast she would have all guests driven to the highway above the complex and they were required to walk back to tha complex, about a mile and a half and several hundred feet below, with the ladies wearing full length dresses and heels. Surprised there were no fatalities.There is a small rocky island about a quarter mile from the mansion named Fannette Island, Mrs Knight had a 16’x16” castle built on the top of the steep island and used it for her afternoon tea room. She and a few guests would motor out to the island, have tea and conversation then motor back to the mansion. Hard way to live.
After her death in 1945 the estate was sold to a Nevada lumberman then to a California lumber tycoon, Harvey West. West was offered more than a million dollars more than he had paid for the estate by a hotel chain but when he found out they intended to tear down the mansion and build a hotel in its place he refused to sell.Upkeep and maintenance expenses increased every year and Mr West finally made an agreement with the State of California to take over the estate and make it a state park. Thanks Mr West.
Emerald Bay is named such because the bay is much more shallow than the lake. The lake is a vivid blue but in the shallows of the bay the color is emerald green.Not much of a stretch but still a beautiful bay surrounded on three sides with the high granite mountains and Ponderosa pines.
Another clear day we drove around the lake clockwise. On our prior visit all the little villages were quaint and quiet. Not so on this drive. Every village looked like it was Lake Tahoe with people, people, people and there even seemed to be more vehicles than people. A beautiful drive but crowded.
After circling the lake and ending up in Stateline, Nevada in yonder year there were two casinos, now there were probably a dozen with two new ones under construction. And all seemed crowded with people. The Hard Rock was the newest casino so we decided to take our $5 budget and see what it looked like. We’re far too old for this. The music was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think and cigarette smoke so thick your eyes burned. My budget was shot in short order but Priss made her grubstake last for a few hours with a headache from the music and watery eyes from the smoke. If we ever go back we’ll look for an old farts joint.
When we were in Ignacio, CO. the Sky Ute Casino was a no smoking casino and they didn’t seem to lose any business because of it. And it certainly smelled better than the Hard Rock. We didn’t go in any other casinos so we’re not sure how they operate, we both still had headaches two days after we left.
On the morning we departed Tahoe we had two routes we could take to Lee Vining, CA, our next destination. But the Tamarak forest fire was still out of control and growing. Parts of our two routes, highway 88 and highway 395 had both been closed in places because of the fire. The fire had jumped across highway 88 and in the photos we saw the flames appeared to be 50 feet high or more. We’re brave but not that brave. Our original planned drive was a little over a hundred miles but we had to go to Carson City, NV then Fallon, NV, then Hawthorne, NV, back into California and to Lee Vining. A total of about 230 miles. And smoke was bad holding visibility to about a quarter mile or less from Tahoe to Carson City and almost to Hawthorne before it cleared.
Hawthorne, NV might be an interesting place to spend some time, I had heard of it but did not know what was there. As we approached from the Fallon direction we first saw many large buildings arranged in rows then beyond that many pyramid shaped structures that looked somewhat like bunkers. When we got closer there was a sign that stated everything was US Military surplus and munitions storage. Would love to go through the place and see what all is surplus. Or better, know how many dollars were sitting there unused. Will do some reading on this place.
Next, Lee Vining and the east side of the Sierras.
Later.
-Tom