Thursday, May 16, 2024

Coffee in Soda Springs

On August 1, 2023, I wrote that while my twin seven year old boys and I were sleeping at our campsite on Donner Lake one of my boys woke up at 3am to say I love you and I thought that was really cute.

We slept until nine that morning. I gave them chocolate milk, and an apple and then tried to pack for a trip to Donner Summit later in the day. We were going to have dinner in Truckee also.

My older sister arrived from Reno at 10:30am with her daughter and the five of us headed up i80 around 11 o’clock. Old 40 had had a landslide over the winter so we had to go the long way.

I got coffee in Soda Springs and gave the boys a mini tour as we closed in on the original transcontinental tunnels over Donner Pass, which are now abandoned. Once there, we took a selfie at the entrance next to the dedication and historic marker. Everyone dealt pretty well with the first spooky tunnel, which is basically a raw bore through granite. We had a bunch of flashlights.

The boys got way ahead of us. The next tunnels, numbered Seven and Eight, went quickly. We climbed through a bunch of holes in the side of Tunnel Eight to look at the view in the canyon. My sister bruised her shin so had to take a break, but that section contains my favorite gallery in all of the tunnels so I continued on with the boys.

We made it all the way to Tunnel Nine and I got some great pictures before we rushed back. The boys really enjoyed it. We saw climbers and I noticed some new graffiti I had never seen before.

Later we drove i80 back to Truckee and I noted that there was a lot of traffic. At the campsites we went to the lake for a short bit and hung out at the picnic tables to have lunch. My sister had made us a great picnic. I enjoyed a walk through the taiga near the lake too.

We took a swim and then we drove to a brewery on the east end of Truckee for dinner. Eventually my sister and niece had to go and they dropped us at our campsite before driving home.

I was feeling exhausted then and we started getting in our sleeping bags by nine. I noted that they were still making noises in their tent as I was writing.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

No comments:

Post a Comment