Day 4
Destination: Known

Ok, I'm determined to complete an entry for every day of my road trip even though I've had a gigantic hiatus/sabbatical/what-have-you since my last entry. Which I believe was Day 3. I left you at the America's Best Value in Tahoe. Anyway, on day 4 we awoke in Tahoe to really cold weather. The car windows were all frozen over. We did not have an ice scraper in the car. Instead of being patient and waiting for the sun/defrost function to do its work, my dad decided to roll down his window, stick his head out, and drive up to the front office to check out. Imagine him doing this to choruses of my mom yelling, "Steve, you're going to kill someone!" Humorous. He didn't kill anyone. After they decided to take my advice and scrape off the windows with a credit card, we were on our way. We drove around Lake Tahoe, which takes a decent amount of time. We stopped for breakfast. My dad really wanted to eat at a casino buffet, so we stopped and went into Harrah's. When he figured out that the buffet was $25 (I'm not paying $25 for breakfast!"), we left and tried to go to IHOP. It was super crowded. So we left. We ended up eating at some place very similar to IHOP. Can't recall the name now. Seems to be a chain in the western states, but I had never heard of them before.

Here's a picture of Lake Tahoe. I'm bored of Tahoe pictures since this was the second time I'd been there in the last couple of months. If you have a hankering to see more Tahoe pictures, go back to my entry when I describe in detail my visit to Joleen in early July.


We then stopped at the Donner Memorial State Park...the fateful place where the Donner Party was forced to eat each other to survive the harsh winter back in 1846-7. It was pretty boring, but we didn't pay the $5 or whatever to go into the actual museum where presumably you'd get a pamphlet or something...so we just walked around and read the minimal plaques erected at various points. Here's me taking a bite out of my dad's arm--when visiting the Donners, eat like the Donners. Or something.


Apparently, the snow got so high that winter that it was up to the top of the statue base (right below their feet). But, you know, that statue was built later. ;)


Then we finished out drive west and made it to Joleen and Sunny's in Yountville in time for dinner.

Day 5
We packed up the U-Haul and left for AZ, making it to some random motel (Super 8, I believe) in California along Highway 15? Or something. I don't know. I don't remember which road we took in California. Whichever road leads from Napa to Vegas. Here's Joleen, Sunny, and Wicket standing outside their vacant apartment.