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.
No comments:
Post a Comment