TVC Office - Day # 30 - Thirty-one

When we woke up Labor Day there was a sea of tents and RV's in the campground of Tahoe Valley.  By Noon over 270 of the 430 odd sites had been vacated, and their former occupants were seen clogging up the local highways to the east and to the west of our location.  A few people had the good sense to delay their departures until late afternoon, or just plain waited until Tuesday.  There is nothing like being stuck in a 100 mile long traffic jam to undo all the positive benefit of a long weekend vacation.....and haven't we all been there and done that?

As TLE and I walked the short 3 minutes over to open the TVC office at 7:30 am for the last time this summer there were people already finished packing their vehicles and heading home......I suspect if they weren't on the road by 6 am they would have a tough slog homeward in really bad traffic, which turned out to be the case for many based on the many reports we received from new arrivals.

Last few minutes of our TVC office duty

September 1st, on a side note, marks the end of 31 months on the road, and 43 months living full time in our Newell.  

The day seemed to go fast, and just as we were counting out our cash drawers my friend Don Neff, whom we were expecting, walked in the office.  Don is a well known artist and is visiting Lake Tahoe to participate in the North Tahoe Plein Air Open festival this week, so we had made arrangements to get together for a couple of hours on our last day in SLT.  We walked over to our coach where TLE set out some cheese and crackers while Don opened a bottle of Glenlivet 12 year old single malt......we sat talking non-stop for the next 2+ hours until we absolutely had to get changed to walk over to a local italian restaurant for our staff banquet.  As always there is never enough time to talk about and say everything on your mind, but I know we and Don will cherish those 120 minutes of re-connection for a long, long time.

We arrived at the restaurant a few minutes late at 6:45 to join our TVC friends for the last time this summer......what a cool way to have spent this summer working with good friends.  There were a lot of hugs, exchanging of contact information, and maybe.....just maybe a few tears.  We reminded everyone that it was not "Goodbye", but "until next time".

We got home a little before 10, and finished securing the VW inside the trailer, as well as loading the last of the firewood for our trip north to the Oregon coast, and were in bed by 11 pm......of course I woke up several times during the night with thoughts racing through my head about Tuesday's departure.  Onward we go to the next chapter in the ongoing nomadic adventure!

Thanks for stopping by!