I’ve been anticipating this date for weeks, perhaps even months. Sure July and August are always fun with a steady series of events such as the Concerts on The Commons and Truckee Thursday, but the middle of summer is also crowded. The kids are out of school so everyone heads away from the heat of the Bay Area and Sacramento to enjoy some much needed R and R at Lake Tahoe.
The crowds peak at the end of July and then very slowly start to dwindle as school district after school district snatches another group of kids back from the lake (I’m sure the kids are kicking and screaming as they get dragged away…”Wait, just one more swim!”) The crowds briefly return for the summer crescendo over Labor Day…but then the day after Labor Day, that’s what we have all been waiting for. The beginning of Local’s Summer. Today!
We set out to celebrate the joys of September 4th by heading out onto the lake in my wood canoe. We arrived at Tahoe Park Beach at 8:45 am. There were no other people on the beach. The lake was as still as a pane of glass. There were no boat wakes. There were only a few other folks in kayaks and on paddleboards. It was peacefully quiet. We all had ginormous shit grins on our faces, and felt like Flounder in Animal House, “This is going to be great!”
We paddled from Tahoe Park to the dam above Fanny Bridge in Tahoe City. Aside from a few very talented water skiers who had also been waiting for this day all summer, it was just us silent paddlers, a few quiet folks on docks, and some squawking ducks. Even the haze from the smoke partially obscuring the mountains couldn’t deter our joy in being lucky enough to be here now. We knew we had hit the jack pot. Had made it to the other side of summer, and we were stoked!
Nice weather, small crowds, beautiful lake. Hopefully there are a few more months of all of this before the snow flies and the crowds return.