day 3 // tahoe! [finally]

So just gonna start off with the fact that the majority of today was spent in a car.

But before that happened, we left J's cousin's house and got on the road somewhat early-ish. We stopped for breakfast at this cute little place called the Black Bear Diner in Rohnert Park, CA. It was basically a cabin that sold lumber-jackish diner food and it was great. I ordered these delectable pineapple upside down pancakes-- 12/10 would highly recommend! Their menus were made to look like newspapers with news stories on the outside-- very clever.

Bears....everywhere....

After we were finished, we rolled out and drove. And drove. Traffic was so bad but it was lovely to look out [esp. on this one particular stretch of road] and see wildlife and kind of a marshy-water-on-both-sides-of-the-highway thing.

I drifted in and out of sleep but was awakened by the car hitting some steep inclines later in our journey. I thought San Francisco was bad-- we wound up in Colfax, CA after pursuing some "bicentennial gold mining nozzle". However we didn't find it right away, and ended up on SUPER steep back roads with super tight and narrow turnarounds.

But we eventually found it [and it was a tad anticlimactic because apparently it was put there in like 1853 which is totally not  a bicentennial nozzle, if you ask me [it's not 2053 yet].

Oh, and there was a whopping bees nest in the nozzle opening (-:

After "ooh-ing" and "ahhh-ing" at the nozzle, we decided to take a stroll down the cute little town and we stumbled upon bathrooms and ice cream. The ice cream place was called "scoops" and they had a ton of original and interesting flavors-- "Maui Waui" sticks out to me as one I remember [I ended up getting it with a scoop of Birthday Cake Batter :P]. But it was delectable, and as we ate we strolled up and down the strip to see small town vendors all set up on the sidewalk to sell drawings, paintings, vegetables... one guy even had a ton of vintage cars on display. We also came across a slew of bird nests that were made out of mud, hiding on the roof of what looked to be a very old [but restored!] railroad building. 

We got back in the car and continued our journey towards Tahoe. What was supposed to be a 3 hour drive turned into 5+ hours with all of the stops and the traffic. But it was also completely worth it once we stopped on the highway to get a view of the gorgeous Donner Lake:

J, Jam, and me

When we finally arrived to our house in Tahoe Donner [Truckee, I believe?], we were locked out for a bit because the lockbox code we were given was mildly incorrect {-: But after a couple phone calls we got it straightened out. We tried to figure out where people would sleep and then took a dinner break at a place called Marg's Taco Bistro. I had this mahi mahi taco with a pineapple-habanero slaw-- good stuff!

Afterwards, J, Jam and I hit up the local Safeway to get groceries for J's mom's bday tomorrow and also because we're on kitchen duty tomorrow. During our store excursion a guy sales associate was helping us find chai tea so we started to call him "Chai Guy". It was great.

We're all currently about to pass out because it was a really sneakily full day. Excited for what tomorrow holds, though!!

Until next time,
xx
steph

☀