Liz and Mike loose in an RV: Liz on Lake Tahoe Labor Day 2013

Liz here on our trip to Lake Tahoe. We spent 8 nights in William Kent National Forest for $12.50 per night. Park is on the central west side in California.
Toney Lake Tahoe has not only 3 trillion gallons of water but 155,000 acres of national forest. William Kent was a tremendous benefactor to conservation in its infancy. He and his wife donated land for John Muir Woods near San Francisco and then this sweet park where Mike and I dry camped over Labor Day.
We booked this campsite in June since we were surprised that Sleepy Hollow State park near Lansing was booked solid over memorial Day weekend. Even though we were in luxury of friend Kay Bruns' Brighton driveway and lake house over Memorial Day we vowed not to be caught without a reservation on a summer holiday weekend again. Due to cancellations due to reports of smoke blowing up from fire in Yosemite we would have had a site. But why take a chance? We booked for 6 days and then added on 2 more. After Labor Day is known as "the time of the nearly dead and the newly wed" so no issue finding spaces in the months ahead.
I love Lake Tahoe having snow skied here in Dec 2007. But I ended my skiing when I reinjured my knee and ski patrol carried me down on a stretcher. If God had meant me to ski he'd have given me better knees.

Mike here.
Since Lake Tahoe seems resolutely stuck in the 60's there was only spotty cell reception and nothing resembling Wi-Fi. Thus we had a vacation from any sort of communication.

Crossing Donner Pass going from Gold Run to Lake Tahoe

We took a tour of the Calneva Casino in Tahoe City. This place is ripe with history from bootlegger days into the 60's. This is where the Rat pack hung out when they weren't staying in Las Vegas. It's near the set for Bonanza and the actors were regulars. Every time they came through the door the band would stop playing and start the Bonanza theme. There are rumors that Marilyn Monroe was actually killed here and her body moved elsewhere. It was owned by Frank Sinatra for 3 years after a stunning real estate deal where he ended up paying essentially nothing. Unfortunately, nothing much has been done on the place and it's pretty tatty. New owners are remodeling the club so we were lucky to get the gossipy tour. Our tour guide had all the dirt on who was who and who did what to who. The club is riddled with secret passages and oddities such as a freezer nowhere near the kitchen in a passage with easily removable flooring, the better to clean up after a messy termination? For sure its location right on the California-Nevada border made for some fancy circumvention of gaming laws. Those blacklisted in Nevada ran to the California side when the gaming commissioner paid calls.

Inside Calneva Casino at Stateline of California and Nevada

Redwood paneling

Stateline is painted down center of fireplace

Calneva Tour Guide

Calneva basement where Mafia buries their bodies.

Fanny Bridge over the Lake Tahoe dam.

Not all that long ago the lake was nearly fished out.
Now they're recovering and the recent record for cutthroat is around 21 lbs.

Down the length of Fanny Bridge.

There are a couple of old-fashioned stern-wheelers operating on the lake, dinner cruises and daily sightseeing. Not the old steam powered things, just reproductions. For some reason, the race is a lot less expensive than the tours and only happens once a year. Brunch included, even champagne. While 5 knots is not the type of all-out heart-pounding action the race announcers (Yes, full sportscaster coverage on two radio stations on each boat) made it out to be. Lots of the passengers come every year and even the lieutenant governor of Nevada was there. Oh yeah, our boat (Dixie II) won.

Ski runs. The backside of the surrounding mountains have a lot more.

The loser

Note all the spectators on private speedboats.
They ran circles around us.

Even a Mark Twain impersonator. C+

Being Labor Day weekend there were many amateur events sponsored by casinos and hotels to attract customers. Harvey's Casino had a car show. Not a big one, but nearly every one was a hand built, class act.

Random great view.

This crew of young men were advertising some sort of loan deal and having a lot of fun doing it.

Monday, the tourists were clearing out and the roads were clear enough for us to actually act like tourists. there's only one road around the lake and it can definitely get congested. While the north side is towns, cottages, tourist traps, the south end is national and state parks. Great scenery.

More about this later.

The only island in Lake Tahoe. The wealthy owner built a tea house to use 4 times in the summer.

Vikingsholm is finest example of Scandinavian architecture in US.

Cave Rock is parallel to a highway tunnel

Tuesday, a visit to the UC Davis ecological research center.

This is a very cool thing. a sandbox that you can sculpt into your own ecosystem and see where the rain drains to.

See the water flowing?

UC Davis studies limnology (lakes). They are working to restore wetlands that filter the lake.

Using science to "Keep Tahoe Blue"

We even got in a round of golf.
Not a great municipal course but cheap and we met a few locals enjoying their rounds.

We'd been trying to get into the parking lot for the hike down to Vikingsholm for a couple of days. Always full. Vikingsholm was the creation of a once-widowed, once divorced Chicago socialite with a great stock portfolio. She bought the property in the late nineteen-teens for a quarter million and spent another hundred and fifty thousand building the Scandinavian inspired house on it. There are no roads near it and the hike from a parking lot is the closest way in. There is another route, however. Just drive a couple of miles north to the DL Bliss State Park and follow the 3.6 mile path along the lakeshore. This is actually a much gentler slope. So that's what we did. Actually a really good hike with many good views. Of course we missed the path back to our parking spot and ended up walking an extra mile or so on the way back. This would have been a disaster if we hadn't been rescued by a couple of nice young men, itinerant pressure wash building cleaners who were there for the cliff diving(!). They graciously took us back to our truck parked near the park entrance saving us from a two plus mile walk in the dark.

Drinking potable water from a stream.

Emerald Island is part of the property.
There's a stone teahouse, just big enough for four right at the peak.

Vikingsholm close-up

A very nice sand beach and a boat pier also.

Inside Vikingsholm

No expense spared. The lady was very good to her servants. On her demise she willed each of them a thousand dollars for each year of service and paid for their children's education.