Trip to Lake Tahoe with Dantu and Rama

Dec 24,25,26, 2004

Dantu, Rama Soma and I decided to hit the road for Christmas eve and drive North to Lake Tahoe. Ramya wanted to meet a friend of hers in San Jose, so she would come with us until San Jose. We had driven on the 5 several times and decided to take a more adventurous route. We took 10W, 1N and after driving beside the ocean until Oxnard. After Oxnard we took 33N via Ojai. This is a particularly scenic and little used route passing through and through the Los Padres National drive. The sun set and the forest look absolutely amazing in the full moon light.

After passing through Los Padres National forest we continued on 33N. After driving for an hour and half along 33 we stopped at a quaint restaurant to have dinner. The restaurant had a very well decorated christmas tree and every inch of of it was decorated with all the christmas toys. It looked beautiful.

When we reached the lost hills area, there were long stretches of the road that were extremely foggy with visibility of just a two or three meters. We could not drive beyond 5-10 mph in these stretches.

None of us had been to a church on christmas eve (I had never been to a church before) and so we decided that we should experience that. If we stayed on on 33N it seemed that it would be impossible to see a church and midnight was approaching. We took 198 W and drove towards 101 and reached king city by midnight. We did manage to attend a mid-night ceremony just in time. It was a novel experience for all of us.

I was too sleepy for the rest of the drive slept off in the car. We dropped Ramya off in San Jose at her friend's house and slept the rest of the night at her friend's house. After the late night drive we woke up late, had lunch.

We hadn't made any concrete plans and given that two of us hadn't been to lake Tahoe and it seemed like a reachable destination, we decided to drive to lake Tahoe. We took 101N, 84E, 880N,680N,580E,99N and 88N to Tahoe. There were a lot of vineyards on the way. There's Dantu and Ramu posing in front of a vineyard. It was full moon and it looked absolutely gorgeous in the evening sky.

As we drove north along 88, and climbed higher in altitude the scenery turned white with snow. Driving by snow with snow-capped mountains bathed in moonlight was indeed a dreamy sight. It started to snow and we had a really hard time finding a motel to stay overnight in the snow. After quite some searching finally found a place in South Lake Tahoe. After reserving a room we started to hunt for a decent place to eat. We were quite cold and famished and were very relieved on finding a nice place to eat.


We woke up early and went in search of a place to have breakfast. It had snowed overnight As we stepped out, there was snow everywhere. We had our breakfast at Ernies coffee shop.

Refreshed we started to drive up in an anticlockwise direction around Lake Tahoe along 50N. We had started our trip around lake Tahoe in Nevada and the border between Nevada and California was clearly marked by the presence of casinos on one side and the lack on the other.

All the roads on either side were completely covered in snow. It had snowed quite heavily last night. The roads however were drivable since they had been cleared by snow ploughing vehicles. Tahoe beaches were covered in snow and ice too. We spent some time walking in LakeRidge - a really quaint little town. It was very well decorated for Christmas. After spending sometime in Lakeridge, we drove further up north along 28N. We stopped wherever we could take a good picture and explore the area a bit. It was quite cold. We got some really nice pictures of lake Tahoe. At some places we tried to hike down to the beach but it proved quite inaccessible due to all the slippery ice. There was one beach however, where there was sand and it was quite accessible. I had to obviously try and get into the freezing cold water and so I rolled up my pants and bravely walked in. The feeling was quite intense, it felt like thousands of needles pricking in my legs. My legs were absolutely numb by the time I came out of the water. After spending sometime at the beach we continued north.

There were some absolutely spectacular view along the way. We circumnavigated Lake Tahoe along 28 and then 89 through Nevada stopping at various scenic points. By the time we finished circumnavigating it was late in the afternoon and we were quite hungry and back in the south end of the lake in Nevada. We found an Indian restaurant here and had lunch to our fill.

We were done with Tahoe and had two more days. We decided to drive down to Death valley. The idea was to tkae 395 S all the way down. The snow became quite intense along the way. We stopped at any scenic site we felt like taking pictures or exploring. It started to snow very heavily along the way. We had no reservations and had never been to death valley before. My hope was that no one but us would be nuts to go to death valley for christmas and so accomodation would be easy.