We all went swimming.

On August 6 I wrote that the boys and I woke at seven at the campgrounds at Donner Lake and by 815 we were on our way to the coffee shop on our rented bikes. I had them lock up the bikes and I bought coffee. I gave them iPads so I could make some phone calls.

When I got off the phone, we rode our rental bikes to the store and the laundromat and started a load. The boys handled the bike ride easily. We stopped at the Donner Creek Brewery for lunch, and the boys played pool. They also found a mini-Pac-Man machine in the back which was fun.

When my older sister showed up, we rode to meet her at the campground and I re-organized. We all went swimming.

We walked to the lagoon at Donner Lake and drank margaritas while the boys played on a giant rock in the lagoon. I got pictures of the boys pushing each other off of it. I also took the boys to the rope swing and jumped in with them.

When we got ready to go, we stopped by the campsite. Then I took the boys on the bike path. My sister met us at the bike shop where we dropped off our rentals.

After that we had dinner at 50/50 brewery. They had ok tacos, but I got a Caesar salad with chicken. We discussed family and politics. We also discussed the boys time on vacation; the bike ride and the boys told us their stories about the trip.

After dessert we said bye to my sister, and I enjoyed a second beer while we waited for TART Connect to show up and that ended up taking a long time. I ended up sitting outside of the restaurant watching at least a dozen kids play.

Some kids were chatting with the boys about their lives, and their questions were pretty detailed. It often happens that I have to provide my boys’ new friends with my phone number which is always awkward. In this case the kids had had actually lived near us in SF before moving away.

When we finally got back to the campsite, I chatted with the boys about detective Pikachu.

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.

Over The Rainbow Arch

On August 5, 2024, we got up around 8am and organized our campsite as we had breakfast. We made it to the Donner Creek bike path by 10am and made a stop at the bike rental shop and picked up a cup of coffee before riding to the beach on Donner Lake and onward to the top of South Shore Dr.

We then descended to the lake’s edge but quickly transitioned to Mount Judah Drive in the Southern Headlands neighborhood. We ascended to Devils Peak Drive, where, at the end of the street, there is a local trail above the local water tank and next to a new home under construction.

I had had problems dragging my bike up this trail while on tour the summer before. However, we had much smaller bags. So, I brought my bike to the top and ran back down and helped the boys as they pushed their bikes up one by one. I taught them how to push the seat from behind and hold the handle bar while walking up. I led the bike from the front but made sure that we were doing it cooperatively.

This left us on a spur of Lakeview Canyon Road, which was easy enough for the boys to ride. It got better as we approached Lakeview Canyon Road proper and, after the intersection, we had to stop a couple times because the climb began in earnest there.

We got to Lakeview Canyon Creek and enjoyed the clear mountain spring water. There were several such streams and we took time to rest at each crossing. The climb to the right of way of the old railroad tracks was tedious and the boys needed help, but I was happy.

We made it to historic Eder which had served as a watering station for trains before it was abandoned in the 1800s. We took pictures above Tunnel 41 on the UP mainline and looked at the historic trails nearby which had provided water from a stream in Emigrant Canyon on the other side of Schellenberger Ridge.

We walked back to the overlook of tunnel 41 and sat in the shade and ate lunch. A short while later we rode to the abandoned tunnels which would connect us to Donner Pass. We barely took a few photos before entering. It was very dark at first but with the help of several flashlights we eventually had an easy time.

Many portions of the tunnel system are in fact just sheds built over the rail bed to protect the cliffside construction from sliding snow and rocks. In some places the sheds have even fallen over the edge and down the cliffs below such that you can step out and look at the mountain peaks all around Donner Lake. I have always found these stretches of the tunnels remarkable because the combination of low light and the various graffiti pieces which line the interior of the system make them vividly colorful. We found my favorite “galleries” from the year before.

I was impressed that the boys were able to get as far as we did on the rough gravel. When we could not ride the bikes, we walked them through. I made a bunch of photos. As we passed through the next few segments of tunnel, things moved a lot faster. We had no trouble, even though we only had a couple of flashlights.

Once we had exited, we rode to old 40 Lodge and had orange crush and root beer. I taught the bartender how to make a Ferrari cocktail. One of my boys got permission to tape a dollar, upon which he had written the letters “SF” to the ceiling above the bar.

A little while later, we got on the bikes and descended Old 40 to and I got a picture of us riding over Donner Pass, which was really cool. Going over The Rainbow Arch Bridge was spectacular and I took pictures there too. The descent was 1100 feet! My boys were really excited about it, but they were definitely very cautious in how they rode.

We stopped at the West Donner Beach Pub to have fish and chips. There was cornhole and foosball and the boys were loud as they enjoyed them. When we were done eating, we went to the ice cream shop in the village. The boys played cornhole literally every time we stopped because it was everywhere.

Once we circled Donner Lake and got back onto South Shore Dr, the ride to the campground went really easy. We passed Lakeview Canyon on the way and I pointed out a bunch of other things to the boys. When we got to the campground area, I took us along a shortcut which went directly to Split Rock and at the campground we prepared for the night and wound down.

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.

Tahoe City

On August 4, I wrote that the day before in the morning the boys got me up by 8:15. It had rained all night and initially, I was miserable but once I got the second tarp over me, I was fine really. The boys had complained a bunch of times but by 4:30 we were asleep. In the morning I told them to pack up their sleeping bags and we took the tent down.

Eventually everything was nearly packed and I got the boys to take a walk, which may not have been the best idea cause they disappeared. They came back when it started raining again. We ate and finished packing. We were learning how to work together and they were learning to understand me. I was also learning to show them more understanding and care.

Once we had the bags packed up, we walked to the Donner Museum. However, our TART Connect – the county’s free local ride share service – came quickly. When we got to the Amtrak station I frantically asked the station staff where the 89 bus stopped and we ended up running across the street because it miraculously came a minute later.

The TART 89 bus follows the highway up the Truckee River Canyon and we were able to view Olympic Valley as the bus passed through it. I spoke to a guy from Boulder and a girl from Georgia who were hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail. Later we waited with them for the TART Shoreline bus and checked into our Tahoe City hotel around 1:30p. We dropped the bags and went to the laundromat. I took them to all the stores. I was looking for bags to replace the ragged ones were were using. It kept on raining. I wasn’t really concerned about it though.

We went back to the hotel and my sister showed up a bit later around three. It was only a short while later that we went to the coffee shop near the laundromat. I switched some stuff out. We went to the beach and then I stopped by the motel with clean laundry. I also went to Safeway to pick up some drinks before returning to the beach. By 5:30p the boys had jumped in the lake and played with their uncle.

The five of us went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner at the brewery across the highway. The menu was spare but the food was good. I did what I could to find what I wanted. My boys were having feelings but my sister was helpful. During the meal I may have been too forthright about my opinions.

After dinner, I we all got along again as we headed back to the hotel. The five of us went to motel’s common area to chat with other the guests over drinks and s’mores. When my sister and her husband took off for Reno, we wound down and I finished up for the day.

In the morning of the day that I wrote this I slept until nine. We ate some food and packed. When we had checked out, we stopped at the store and then put our name in at Rosie’s Diner to have a breakfast of coffee, pancakes and French toast. Then we went to the lake for a swim. I was glad we were able to do that. When I got the boys back together we walked to the bus stop.

I noted that I needed to buy a new back pack because I had come to recognize, based upon feedback from the boys while walking to the bus, that their backpacks are quite a burden. They were specifically displeased with me for driving them to run to the bus which comes only once an hour. Fortunately, my concern was unfounded because the schedule was off by about 20 minutes.

As we returned to Olympic Valley, I noted that boys thought we were getting off at the ski resort but I was just trying to point out specific things about the place. A few minutes later we got off the bus at Gateway and I got a coffee.

One of the boys hurt his finger as he was leaving the coffee shop. While it was small, the boy was inconsolable. I was sad for him. One of the managers in a building next-door gave us some Band-Aids. She ran a sushi restaurant. The whole incident ended on a positive note.

A short while later TART Connect took us to our campsite. We set up the tent before we got another ride to a bike shop nearby to pick up some bikes for a 24 rental. The guy at the counter set us up with the reservation I had made a month before.

Once we had bikes to ride we rode to the burger shop in historic downtown. We had to climb over the hill Sierra College sits on and that was really hard for the boys. The hotdogs and chicken sandwich were good though. When we got ice cream later, I noted that the shop in historic Truckee is very traditional but kind of raggedy. Also ice cream shops are always super hot.

We rode our bikes back to the campground, but stopped at Save Mart as the sun went down. I got us a bunch of snacks, but our backpacks were kind of small. One of my boys was in a rush to get back at that point so we crossed Coldstream Bridge quickly. However, when we got past Split Rock, we discovered that the other boy had taken a wrong turn somewhere in Creek Campground. I was frantic because I didn’t know how he would deal with being lost in the dark. So we traced what we thought was his path across Donner Creek to the State Park tollbooth and we found him back at our campsite. It was a great relief.

We unpacked and had a snack before winding down.

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.

Donner State Park

On August 2, 2024, I wrote that the day before I had boarded the Zephyr to Truckee with my two boys for a week-long camping trip. Near Donner Pass, the slow sections of the track allowed us to look around a bit, but we mostly just assumed we were getting off soon. I actually wanted to take a nap in my seat, but the Donner Tunnel was approaching, so I had us stand in the last car until we were through to snap a picture of the east portal.

As we descended into Truckee, the view from my seat was marvelous as we approached the station. When we got off we waited for the bus to Safeway but discovered that the local bus was impacted by traffic from the local street festival. So, I hopped on the bus going the opposite direction and found out that this was the best idea since the station stop was essentially stranded by road closures and there was only one bus on that route anyway.

By the time we got to Safeway, we were stressed from the heat but our moods quickly improved after we took in the air conditioner. We picked up food for and downed a Dr Pepper before getting back on the local bus.

We were really tired from the travel when we got to the park but found our camp site pretty easily. As we set up camp, I fell into a conversation with the neighbors and that really helped. They had a little dog and their two kids were a little older than mine. They offered us dinner which was nice. We got to know each other for a little while. My boys enjoyed playing with them too.

We started winding down at sunset and the boys suddenly decided to get into their tent. I was at the picnic table for an hour while they settled and then was alone for another hour. I went to bed at around 12:30 midnight. I slept pretty well given the circumstances. However, I have a nice down sleeping bag and a good Therma-Rest. I checked the boys a few times.

We slept until eight. The Neighbor boys showed up with cereal and they also offered us bacon. The boys disappeared soon after that and didn’t get back until around 9:30. It turned out that they had made a new friend. We made a bag and said bye to to the campground kids as we were headed to the Donner Boat Launch to paddle over to the Lakewood Neighborhood for brunch.

The piers in the Lakewood Neighborhood are all open to the public. We docked and walked to Lakewood Diner and put our names in. Then I bought us a mule and flip-flops for the boys at the Lakewood Store. When our names were called at the diner, I got the boys pancakes and everybody got extra bacon. I got coffee and the boys got hot cocoa. The view was great.

We bumped into a couple who live in Truckee having brunch because. They recognized the boys’ t-shirts, which had the name of their mother’s office job written on them. He told me who he had worked for there and I recognized the CFO. I texted her about it.

A short while later we said goodbye and walked Moraine Street back to the paddleboat. I noticed that the crossing was actually pretty easy. However, the afternoon winds hadn’t yet started. I took a dip, but it was really hard getting back into the boat.

When we dropped the boat off, we walked in our new flip-flops to the campsite. The boys disappeared while I was making a bag for a short trip to Truckee.

I couldn’t exactly see them, but one of them boys was mystified by Split Rock, so I where they had gone. Once we were assembled and ready to go, we walked to campground office and spent a little bit of time at the museum. After asking a few questions, I was very excited to discover that the park has a hiker biker campsite. It was also nice to learn that there were no restrictions on dispersed camping above the state park.

We ordered a TART Connect. When we got to Central Truckee at the Amtrak station, we walked across the tracks to the clothing store on River Street. I saw a jacket I liked, but it was the wrong color. I wanted pants but it was warm enough to wear shorts. So, I decided not to buy anything.

We went to the pizzeria. The hostess was really nice. The boys were into the Olympics on television. Next to us were two little girls desperately trying to play with their mom’s telephone. They were the same age as my boys. While chatting with them, my boys engaged another table to help with the video game machine. Apparently you have to push the buttons the right way to play Pac-Man.

When we left the pizzeria, there was a little rain and I wasn’t happy about it. I looked at my phone and it seemed like it was going away. The TART Connect brought us back to the campsite. We re-organized and then we went for a walk. We looked at Split Rock. I indulged my boy because he had taken us to the smaller version but later I took them to the actual Split Rock and he was really impressed.

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.