We left yellowstone and camped in Idaho near Twin Falls, at a place called Anderson Camp. It was mostly an RV park, but they had a few tent sites too. There wasn't anyone else there when we got there, so we basically got to just throw our stuff down anywhere. The place was literally right off the highway, so there really wasn't anything to do in the way of hiking. They had wifi though, so we both updated our blogs. The place had hot showers and decent bathrooms, so that was good. They also sold Mexican Coca Cola in the convenience store, which made Steve happy.
The next day, we left with the intention of camping somewhere in Nevada, but after a few hours, we decided to just keep on driving til we got to California. So after many boring hours of driving through Nevada, we got to California around 6 o'clock. Then we had to figure out where we were sleeping. Since it was Steve's birthday, and since it was a Friday night and there were no available campsites near Lake Tahoe, we decided to just say "fuck it" and stay in a hotel. After several phone calls to various hotels and motels in the area, with either no rooms available or rooms that were much much too expensive, we got a room at the Truckee Hotel (which as it turned out was about a block from where we were sitting on a bench trying to find a hotel). So we drive over (could have walked, just didn't realize it), and we check in. It's a cute place, really old, since it's a historical building, but charming. It wasn't the nicest place in the world, but it had a bed, real bathrooms and showers, and it was clean. Exactly what we were looking for.
After checking in and checking the place out a bit, we were starving. We walked around for a bit trying to find somewhere to eat, before settling on a place called...well, I forget what it was called to be honest. But it was an Italian place that was really cute and cozy and had tasty food. We got a bottle of wine and really good dinners, then went to have a drink at a bar just across the street from our hotel.
The only major flaw of this hotel, is that it is right next to a train station. The train went through about 5 times or more during the night, each time blowing it's stupid whistle unneccessarily loud multiple times, so that every time it passed I was thoroughly awake by the time it was gone. Aside from that, I really liked the place. The rooms were European style, meaning that they didn't have their own private bathrooms, but multiple bathrooms lined one side of the hallway. As there weren't many other people staying that night, it basically meant that we had 6 bathrooms all to ourselves.
The next morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel and then drove down to Lake Tahoe. It was only about 15 miles from Truckee, but we had to drive around a while to find parking. Eventually we found an area that wasn't too crowded, only a few minutes walk from the lake. I got to spend a while drawing, it was nice. We left just as a big crowd of people were getting there.
We drove to our campsite, Granite Flats, a few miles from the lake. It was set up really poorly, and our campsite, number 66, was for some reason in between sites number 34 and 35. Once we found it, we set up. It was so hot, and of course, our site was the only one without shade. We killed some time at the convenience store a mile down the road, buying ice and firewood and beer. Then we brought a cooler full of beer down the river near the campsite, set up a couple of chairs, and sat in the shade reading and drawing (well, Steve was reading, I was drawing).
After dinner, we went to bed. We slept just fine until around 12:30 when some idiots showed up at the campsite across from us. The opened up their stupid pop-up camper (which is very loud) and proceeded to talk loudly and make a lot of noise for the next hour and a half. We asked to be quiet twice before they shut up, so we were finally able to fall asleep again at like 2 am.
So then we went to Spring Lake, in Santa Rosa, which I will write about later.
