We've only got a 40-mile travel day down to the south end of Lake Tahoe and our check in time there isn't until 2:00PM. So once again we're in "kind of a pickle" about what to do to spend 2-hours to go 40-miles.
When we drove down to Lake Tahoe to take our cruise on Saturday, we were also doing a little reconnaissance to figure out the best way to tow THE POD down to the lake today. There were two routes we could take to accomplish that. We took one route on our way to the lake and the other route on our way back to the campground.
We are starting our day at an elevation of 5900' here in the campground. The GPS wants to route us up and then through a 7600' elevation mountain pass just to drop us back down to the 6200' elevation of the lake. That's an unnecessary climb for ROVER and THE POD of 1700'.
Instead of doing that, we backtracked into Truckee at 5800' and then followed the path of the Truckee River along CA-89 up to the lake. That's only a 400' elevation climb, which made ROVER very happy.
Why did the GPS route us the other direction? Because it would have saved us 2-miles over the distance to the next destination.
After traveling up and down several roller coaster like hills along the shoreline of Lake Tahoe, we arrived safe and sound at our next campsite here at Fallen Leaf Campground (6363' elev.).
CAMPSITE PHOTOS
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We arrived at 1:15PM, I sure hope they aren't that strict about their 2:00PM check-in time.
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Pretty clever using the shape of Lake Tahoe on their site posts.
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We've got a trash dumpster at the end of our site, plus a water spigot across the street.
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Cell phone signal here is only 1-bar, but Starlink is up and running just fine.
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This campground is known for high bear activity and we've got a big clear field next to us.
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We are going to be on a "Bear Watch" for our entire 2-night stay here.
SOMETHING ELSE NOTEWORTHY ABOUT OUR LOCATION: The 1992 romantic thriller film "The Bodyguard", starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston (in her feature film acting debut), had a movie set location right here.
Towards the end of the movie, when the couple were "hiding out" in a remote cabin on a lake, that cabin was located on Fallen Leaf Lake, just 3-miles up the shoreline from our campsite.
Today we're driving 30-miles over to Minden, NV where gas sells for $4.65 just about everywhere. We've still got 28% or 94-miles worth of gas left in the tank, so we should make in just fine. Also, across the street from the gas station is another Full Belly Deli location, so we're going to select something from their lunch menu this time around.
ERRANDS WITH A LITTLE SIGHTSEEING TOO
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If I didn't know better, I'd never guess there's a 380' deep lake just beyond those trees.
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Not only is Fallen Leaf Lake 380' deep, it's nearly 3-miles long and a full mile wide.
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The surface elevation of Fallen Leaf Lake is 152' above that of Lake Tahoe.
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This narrow 1.5-lane wide road is the only way to access the dozens of summer lake homes.
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After visiting Safeway Grocery in CA we drove over the mountains into NV to purchase gas.That involved leaving Lake Tahoe at 6300', going to the summit at 7350',
before descending down to the valley floor at just 4700'.
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See that white scar on the NV side of the mountain?That's NV-207, the road we traveled on to get over here to Minden, NV.
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We're heading back to California after buying gas and lunch, only this timewe are going to take a longer and easier route back over the mountains.
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It's also a much prettier route!
I think you'll agree that what she saw from the top of that hill is stunning!
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