Tahoe?! STILL?!?!

In a word, yes. This is the very last of the string of photos from Tahoe. Two months on, and I've finally gotten all of the post-worthy ones (and then some) up on Flickr. I had actually edited these a while back and forgotten about them entirely until I uploaded some pictures from a recent San Diego trip by my brother Randy and my sister-in-law Jenni. Upon opening up Lightroom to begin importing the new pics, I was faced with hostile and accusatory edited yet un-uploaded images that made me gulp with guilt. They looked at me, screeching "I'm FLAGGED but not STARRED! What is WRONG with you?!?! Are we your bastard step-pictures? Aren't we worth blogging about? Aren't we worthy of Flickr? Were we all just mistakes?" After promising that they are still my babies (and secretly telling each one it is my favorite) and pledging to dedicate a blog post to them, I gave them their rightful place in the Tahoe set on my Flickr page.

Nick and I decided to take a leisurely drive down the West side of the lake with the aim of stopping at Emerald Bay for a little sight-seeing and picture taking. Emerald Bay is an interesting microcosm of Lake Tahoe in that it is significantly more shallow than the rest of the lake and therefore reflects light in different ways, giving it a bit more green color than the rest of the aquamarine lake.



Because the lake is so deep, ice doesn't form on the shoreline like it would on normal lakes, but because Emerald Bay is much more shallow a thin crust of ice formed on the Westernmost shore.



The bay also has a very small inlet which makes every inch of it so striking. The sun happened to be shining very brightly when I took this, and the colors just popped!



The teeny island in the middle of the bay, Fanette Island, has the ruins of a tea house that is part of a Scandinavian-style castle on the bay.



A word about where the above picture was taken: there are only a few real pull-offs along the main road, and during the winter most of them become 6-foot snow banks courtesy of snow plows. Nick and I make a great car-based photography team - I say "WHOA!" or "WOW!" or I make generalized grunting noises and he, in two seconds flat, assesses the traffic situation and finds the perfect place to pull over (or circles around until there is no traffic and we can just stop in the middle of the road) so I can hop out and get that shot. Seriously. I feel like these are skills that are in high demand. Much more so than numchuck skills, or bowstaff skills, or any other desirable man-skills.

On this day, the wind was blowing cold and hard, and the snow was piled in very high banks along the road. We stopped at the pull-off for Emerald Bay State Park and tried to slide/climb/inch our way to the lookout. The snow was covered in a layer of ice, and for every two steps you took the wind blew you back one. I ended up standing on a precarious snowbank to take this shot, and I smile when I see it because I know that the combination of being tall and standing on an extra few feet of snow was the only way I could get this vantage point, making it kind of a unique shot!



The high winds were leaving fascinating ripple patterns on the waters of Emerald Bay and Nick and I were transfixed. We should have patented the phrase "ooooooo, look at that!" If you look at the above pictures you can discern the changing patterns.

The wind blew the wispy clouds into a gauzy haze:



There's a viewpoint (with a plowed parking lot!) on the Northwest side of the Bay that was icy but totally worth it! There's a beautiful bleached dead tree trunk that lined up with the icy edge of the Bay:



And a teeny pine that seemed to fit the contours of the island:



Trying to get back to the car over the ice-field, Nick picked a safe path for me and then took the camera (just in case I took an arse-plant) ... and like a good husb - er, true smart-aleck, snapped away. I think he really hoped I would end up ass-over-elbows and I think he REALLY hoped to have captured said moment for posterity. Sorry to disappoint - this was as exciting as it got! (my inner dialogue: "CON-cen-TRATE, CON-cen-TRATE! Right foot, now left foot. Do not fall because that picture will never die.")



But here are my two favorite shots from that stop. One is the view across the parking lot up the mountainside, and I love how the red bushes form a diagonal line across the side of the mountain. The other is an ity bity sapling growing up from the middle of a huge snow-covered rocky prominence.





Nick and I continued our drive down to South Lake and met up with our friends for a late lunch and some light shopping, and then headed up the East side of the lake, stopping just outside of Incline Village for sunset. The sun was golden and rosy (yes, both at the SAME TIME - wrap your heads around THAT) and it gave the smooth rocks a lovely warm hue.





"Ta-DAAAAAAAH, here's my shaaaadow!" (Nick's such a good sport):



The last of the light disappears over the Western peaks:



I kind of hate this picture, because it doesn't even come close to showing how damn cute this hat is!! It's. Freaking. Cute.



But I'll leave you with a picture of our friend's 11-month-old baby who, after the week, is my baby boyfriend. He learned baby sign language (which is really just limited American Sign Language) early on, which made communication with him much easier than I expected! Here he's clapping his hands, which in baby sign means "more" (he was ready for more lunch!). He's the first baby I've spent time with who really has command of the signs and I'm very impressed and will certainly take those lessons on board when we decide to have a lil' bundle of our own!