Day Six

On the sixth day, we rested. No wait, that's supposed to the seventh day. On the sixth day I made grand plans to buy a second chocolate chip square and to go back to the used bookstore to buy reams and reams of Derrida and Foucault. However, we just packed up our stuff to get ready for the trip instead. Much of life is like that day. The best laid plans and such.

I spent the morning on google maps trying to find the prettiest route possible. I put a great deal of stock in pretty drives when I'm on vacation. I rarely take them because I'm a point A to point B kind of guy, but that doesn't mean I don't wish that I was the type of person who would take those scenic routes instead. Realizing that the moms and S would argue against taking the long and scenic route thereby ensuring that I got to take the point A to point B way, I argued vociferously for taking the scenic route. In the best of worlds the scenic route would also be the shortest. However, this gave me the best I could possibly get, since I both got to go the way I actually wanted to go while feeling like, had I not been thwarted, I would have been able to take the scenic route that I also desired. It's rare in life to at least get 2/3 of what you want.

We cut over through Grass Valley while the moms regaled us with stories of old trips to abandoned gold mines she'd taken while teaching junior high. The valley is what I would describe as quaint, ranch style houses set in and amongst the rising hills. We stopped briefly at a farm stand before turning onto the twenty to buy the most enormous blackberries that we'd ever seen. They probably just shipped them in from the local Safeway.

After a while I started complaining about how we could have taken a more scenic drive much to all passengers delight. Lil s was a real champion on this portion of the trip, playing with tags on her car seat or toys or singing to herself. We finally started to climb out of the valley and up towards the Sierras, and I pulled out at a scenic view because I am not the kind of person who pulls out at scenic views, and I wanted to teach myself a lesson about the sort of person I could be. While there we had a group of college guys ask us to take a picture. I begged off because I'm too hasty of a person to be a good photographer. I don't want to frame the shot. I just want the damn thing to get taken. S took it and upon arriving back in the car the moms noted that one of the gentleman was swinging a joint freely in his right hand. I guess I'm just too pure to notice that sort of thing.

The rest of the drive was a pleasant climb into the imposing granite sierras. The tops of the mountain are often sheer, bare of trees, and give you the feeling that if you were trapped on one you might sample one of your friends as well. We passed Donner Lake and Donner pass, and I wondered why they named it that, as if the memory were an honor. I suppose it's an inhibition we've sort of decided is appropriate almost world wide, that people are best left in the ground, though reasonably they have not much use left for that flesh. I've heard that sled dogs will not eat their own unless they've been stripped of skin and thus made to look like something else. The same cannot be said of trolls who dined on one another freely in the Lord of the Rings movies, which is, I suppose, why we're all happy that trolls don't run things.

As we neared Tahoe City the mood in the car picked up, the Truckee river flowing alongside carrying tourists down a particularly mild stretch.

By the time we reached the house it was 2 o'clock, and we set up in our rooms and chatted with family. Lil s was staying in an old Pack and Play that had a crappy plastic bottom that constantly came loose and was probably coated in asbestos. I think she liked it. The place had a hot tub, but I hadn't thought yet to use it. Lil s was the star attraction, greeting various family members with a smile or tears depending on her disposition and theirs.

I went outside for a while to take in the smell of the pines and to reflect on the trips I'd taken in my youth with my father to Tahoe. I remembered pine cones, long and cold afternoons for the season, green shrubs that we attacked with sticks, and games of Monopoly that were impossible to win and then the freezing cold lake, the gravel beaches, skipping rocks in late afternoon light.

We retired early as is the custom on vacation, eager to get enough sleep to awake before our little monster.


Picture time

Evidence that we stopped at the scenic viewpoint, which was worth being seen. Do you see what I did there?