LAKE TAHOE, NV

Crossing the line between Nevada and California

The Lake Tahoe is really a beautiful, I mean it, a wonderful lake.

Oh yes, the environment here is something gorgeous. As usual we passed by fast, our destination being California, but just the view was worth it.

Swimming in the summer, and skiing in the winter. Not bad.

Lake Tahoe, in its purest form. It is almost as pure as distilled water! 97% of purity, have you ever seen something like that?

.. asked for a real vertical picture! Here it is!

First breakfast in California. Are you looking for good, honest, American cuisine? Stay away from fast food or big dinner chains. In Truckee, CA, just off Lake Tahoe, we found an old lady with a terrific hand for eggs and ham. Homemade strawberry jam, ripe peaches and an incredible breakfast burrito!
This one's gonna get 5 stars!

THE DONNER PARTY

California or Bust! ... And finally we arrived to the Donner Memorial. I say finally because the first time we heard about it was in Elko, Nevada. Since then we have been collecting tidbits of information on this incredible (and tragic) adventure, about a group of pioneers that tried to reach California, 150 years ago.

The Donners and the Reeds were fairly rich families in Springfield, Illinois, when they decided to get a better life in California. They The cars were for the luggage. People walked almost all their way to California. left Illinois in April 1846, with three big cars each one, husbands, wives, children, oxen, hired hands. The journey to California could take about 6 months, in that time. Other families joined them along the way. At some point, there were over 80 cars and more than 300 people with the group.

When the group arrived in Wyoming, however, they heard of a shortcut that should shorten their trip in about 300 miles. Most of them Women on the road: they cooked, sewed, kept the children and wrote, wrote a lot. chose to remain on the traditional California trail, by Fort Hall. Donner and more 80 people decided to take the Hastings' shortcut and went to the Great Salt Lake. Everything went wrong from then on. Hastings, the guide, was not in the Fort at Salt Lake to lead them through the mountains; most cattle was lost to poisonous water and to the Indians; and they had to pass the Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile-long desert made of salt where no bush or grass could grow. A two day passing turned to be a painful week. It is fascinating to read the journals or letters written by some pioneers (adults and children). You almost feel you are with them, fearing, hoping, waiting for the new life, and just wanting the journey to be over.

The snow was this high in the winter of 1846. But it was not so easy. All the problems they had, plus internal fights, tragically delayed the Donner party to reach the Sierra Nevada. It was then late September, the beginning of the worst winter in one century. They party got stranded in the mountains during the winter, with little food and no way out, back or forth. What we witness through the pioneers journals is a history of bravery and cowardice.
An old sick man was left to die along the trail; another was outcasted after a s Donner Memorial, California. tupid fight. In the mountains, they fed on cow hides, and eventually resorted to cannibalism. From the 85 original members of the Donner party, only 47 survived. They arrived in the mountains in September: the last survivor was rescued in April, wild and partially crazy.

After the desert, finally some crops again. One hundred and fifty years later, we are on the road again, in the sunny northern California.

The West Coast is just after those mountains.

The mountains here are different. In Wyoming and Utah, they were made of rock (the Rockies). Here, the hills are soft, covered by thick golden grass.

Workplace number 21.

We stop in Williams,CA, for the night. Tourist attraction? A good table for our laptop, Pericles.

(and an hand-held scanner for fast, on-the-road last minute scanning)