Da'aw

Tahoe, or "Da'aw"....Washoe Indian for "Lake"

I love the simplicity of the names given to places and things by the various Native American tribes throughout the west.  You will remember from yesterday that Washoe means "people from here".  Well, today I found that Tahoe is also from the Washoe word "Da'aw" meaning "Lake".  It sounds much more exotic when you say "Tahoe" than "Lake".  Of course, then the next thing you think of is that the official designation of this lake as "Lake Tahoe" is a little repetitive, huh?

The lake is 1,645' deep making it the second deepest lake in North America, second only to Crater Lake in Oregon....1,949' deep.  It has 72 miles of shoreline, and covers 192 square miles.  There are a lot of very interesting facts about Lake Tahoe in this Wikipedia article entitled "Lake Tahoe".  Amazingly, from 1858 to 1890 virtually the entire native forest in the "Tahoe Basin" was logged off to provide timber for the silver mines in Virginia City.  As evidenced by the next picture, the forest grew back in spades.

Our view for the next 3+ months

We left Washoe Lake State Park around 9 am with 39 miles to go....another long, arduous day, right?  The biggest test of the day was the 11 mile climb from HWY 395 up HWY 50 to Spooner Pass where we went from just under 5,000' elevation to over 7,000' in that same distance.  We were mostly in 2nd gear running near "red line" on the tachometer to keep the big DD 6V92 cool.  The grade runs 7-8% most of the way, which pushed the operating temperature of our power plant up to 218 degrees.....the highest I've seen it since last year in Alberta when we climbed the 11% grade up to the Columbia Icefields near Jasper.  Once we crested Spooner Pass we had about 12 miles to go and it took most of that distance to see all the temps get back to normal (oil, coolant and transmission).

We arrived at Tahoe Valley Campground around 10:30.......

.....and within 30 minutes were settling into our site for the summer, #426...........Tahoe Valley Campground is an "Encore" resort and part of the Thousand Trails membership campground system.

We mostly spent the rest of the day getting settled, and getting all our "stuff" out that makes our life sitting in one place for so long more enjoyable.  Of course, one could say just being here at Lake Tahoe would tend to make one's life more enjoyable, and you would be right, of course.  Our site is one of the few here with a clear view of the southern sky, and we were able to dial in our satellite dish within a few minutes.  Our site also has a cable TV hookup.....sweet!  Our site is 70' long, so is just perfect for our length.  As if things could not get better, we are 10 feet from the WiFi repeater, so our WiFi is excellent!  Most of the services we need are within walking, or bicycle distance of the campground, including several great restaurants, and a Subway!

Our good friends, Bill and Debby, arrived a little after 1 pm, and we hooked up with them around 7 pm to walk to Lake Tahoe Pizza Company.....just a block away from the campground.  Their pizza is amazing.....TLE and I had the "Jackpot" with everything on it, plus anchovies on my half.  Yelp gives them 4 stars on 217 reviews.....I'm thinking our rating will be slightly north of that.  

Getting ready for a summer of fun with Bill and Debby!  Ironically, Bill and Debby are from Lake Tahoe originally, and have just finished 4 years of nomadic travels.  This is their 3rd, or 4th summer here at Tahoe Valley Campground, and it is from them that we heard about this workamping job.  We first met them in Cedar Key, FL back in March of 2012, and became immediate friends.  We hooked up again that December back in Cedar Key when we spent 5 weeks there after our stint at Amazon.com up in Campbellsville, KY.

Thanks for stopping by!