Day 3
Monday, May 17
People don’t go to Lake Tahoe in May for a reason. Yowsa, it was cold. We did see a few fellow tourists roaming around, but for the most part Tahoe was very dead. We decided to take the two-hour car journey around the entire lake. If this body of water were allowed to flood the state of California, every inch of California would have 14.1 inches of water on top of it. We took stops wherever we saw signs telling us there existed a park or view point. That left us to wander a few beaches, a couple of cliffs and a dam. I assume the the whole scene is a lot more exciting under sunny skies or mountains fully-covered by snow. Note to othersL don’t go to Tahoe in May. They really don’t want you anyway. By the end of the night, we had driven to West Wendover, Nevada, a casino town at the border just before Utah.
Lake Tahoe very much reminded me of Poway, in the wooden buildings, the Dennys and Taco Bell, and the quiet nature. Lakeshore Boulevard with its cops and annoying slow speeds also similar to Poway Road.
For the record, we went from California to Nevada to California to Nevada all in a span of 45 minutes thanks to a trip to Baja Fresh.
Day 4
Tuesday, May 18
On this day, the interstate travel continued from Nevada to Utah to Idaho to Montana.
In Utah, the stop of choice of was the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City. Why? Because my Macbook Pro 15-inch went kaboom the night before. One second, I was whizzing around the Internet. The next, the rainbow spinny wheel was lost in an infinite cycle as information sought a place on the hard drive but could not find one. According to the genius at the Apple Store, something got encoded funny on the hard drive due to bad luck. They replaced the hard drive as my one-year warranty continues until July 13, but quite the sad day indeed. This means I’ll have to reset all my settings and preferences for the third time on this machine. What to do? What to do? Props are due, however, to the bizarrely busy staff at the SLC Apple Store for replacing the hard drive within 15 minutes.
Idaho had potatoes and cows. We choose not to stop to see them. My mom, in fact, choose even more brazenly to sleep through Idaho and ignore the staples of the state completely.
Here in West Yellowstone, Wyoming, we are less than a mile away from the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The lodge inside the park costs $255 per night, so we took the more frugal approach by staying outside the park for a night. A one-hour drive into the heart of Yellowstone awaits us in the morning. As does rain, snow, wind and an all out chill.
If Lake Tahoe is Poway, West Yellowstone is kind of like the Wrightwood, Big Bear or Solvang in its touristy trap nature–right down to the Asians streaming out a tour bus and students wandering the lands in large groups.