when we arrived in LA we picked up our first rental car, the one we drove to san francisco in, and it was a great car. the boot was big enough to fit both our cases flat in and i, in the passenger's seat, could lay my legs completely flat out without bending them. it was so nice - i thought, gosh! cars in america are great! i should add at this point that we've consistently rented economy cars, the cheapest ones available always. and we've shopped about for good deals. anyway, when we got to SF we returned that car as there was no point having a car in a city where it would cost us more than the rental price to park it. so, when we left on saturday we planned to pick up a new car which we would drive all the way to vancouver and keep for three weeks until we fly to new york. jamie went to pick up this car on saturday morning and i waited with our luggage. then he turned up in what i can only call 'the smallest car in america'. i mean it is tiny. we had to lay all the back seats down to fit our cases in.
it's fine. it's very economical so i'm told (and better for the environment). it was just hilarious as i haven't seen one car this small over here and our other car was so big! it's probably the same size as my car at home. so in this beast, amongst the traffic of the 4 x 4's, we set over to the snowy mountains of lake tahoe. it only took about 3 hours - we stopped for lunch in sacramento - and was such a beautiful drive. it was crazy to see snow! our fist snow of the trip! we arrived at our accommodation, a lovely little wooden cabin surrounded by trees with freshly chopped wood outside and a warning to be 'bear aware' inside!
we set ourselves up for a cosy night in on saturday night and then on sunday got up bright and early for a massive breakfast at the fire sign cafe. we had to wait for a table a little while as it is a very popular place but they had supplied games for those waiting so jamie taught me how to play draughts. we had to abandon our game when our table was ready but i'm pretty sure i would have won. after lunch we took a walk around a very tiny portion of lake tahoe.
the very helpful lady in the visitor's information centre told us about eagle rock, apparently a local's favourite, where a short hike to the top rewarded you with excellent panoramic views of the lake. now, the day we were there we didn't have the best weather, but we thought we'd give it a go anyway. as we climbed up (around 200ft i think) it got really snowy and icy, my trainers have pretty good grip on them so i was okay but jamie was sliding around in his skater shoes!
even on this drizzly, overcast day the views at the top were still incredible and getting up there was really fun (despite our slips and trips!).
we even managed to throw a few snowballs! thankfully jamie didn't throw this in my direction or i'd have been flat out!
we stayed in sunday night and had ourselves a little oscars party for two! they started at 4pm on the west coast so we snuggled ourselves in for the night and enjoyed seeing the academy awards be given out. bright and early monday morning we got up to start our longest drive of the whole trip - nine hours from lake tahoe to portland. we actually took 14, arriving at 9pm at night, as we built in loads of stops and got to see some lovely places along the way. and our little car was just dandy the whole way.
No comments:
Post a Comment