WHEW!

Our Lake Tahoe adventure included rain, hail, bonks and a lot of hard work.

As you all may know we went up to Lake Tahoe so I could participate in America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride as part of Team in Training. TNT raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. You can get more info by clicking here.

So we headed up on Wed morning and get up there with various stops along the way about 5. Our house is pretty nice. Lots of room and it backed up to a park. It also had a large back yard with hot tub and deck.

Uncle Clay and family arrived shortly after us and they brought the bounce house! SCORE. Must entertainment there.

The weather pretty much turned to crud after that. It rained Thursday, Friday and Saturday with little breaks in between. It did make for pretty rainbows however.

My great friend Val also came up to do the ride. We did a couple of short rides on Thursday and Friday and trained with the Team on Saturday. Here we are at Kiva Beach

After getting sprinkled on the whole ride we got home and the hail started.

Logan's 4th birthday was Thursday. That morning we went over to the park and of course he did a huge face plant with the following result

Didn't bother him too much but it sure did look awful. We had some birthday cake and presents and we were told in no uncertain terms that there would be NO SINGING! I have some pics I still have to download of him blowing out the candles.

Friday we headed up to Carson City to have dinner with my friend Vic and her family. Her son Scott was the hero of the evening for playing with the boys and giving Logan some of his outgrown Hot Wheels. Thanks Scott!

On Saturday afternoon we hit a Renaissance Festival. It rained the whole time but the boys still enjoyed watching some sword fighting, looking at all the costumes and building castles. Logan as you can see had some very definite ideas of how the castle should be

The ride started at the Horizon Casino

Here is my jacket with everyone who donated on it and the large heart in the middle where the names of people I was riding in honor of.

Val and I ready to go

This is the view riding out from the starting point

At last the weather cooperated and we started out under overcast skies but it cleared up pretty quickly and turned into a pretty decent day. This ride does not mess around. There is over 2600 vertical feet of climbing! here is part of the climb up to the Emerald Bay stop.

The flat part of the ride up

View from the top

Whoot, we made it, without walking even! There are 3 very steep switchbacks to climb and we stopped after each to catch our breath and slow down the heart rate. Riding at altitude is WAY different than riding at sea level!

This picture is kinda hard to see but that road is across the lake. That is the top of the Emerald Bay climb and this photo is taken from the Emerald Bay rest stop.

This is the view from the Kings Beach lunch stop.

Judd brought the boys out to cheer us on.

We had another monster 7 mile climb up Spooner Summit. It was broken into sections so it wasn't so bad but it was still alot of climbing. Never really very steep just very long. The ride though Incline Village was beautiful. There were some amazing houses in there. We joked that we should throw a couple quarters in the slots and win a couple mil so we could buy one.

Here we are after a long hard day in the saddle. Happy to be finished and proud we rode every mile.

We are tough broads!


We have decided if we ever do this ride again we are going to do the 35 mile boat cruise version. You get a continental breakfast, a sightseeing cruise on the Tahoe Queen and a short ride along the east shore. Although there is still 1000 feet of vertical climbing on that version.

All in all it was a very enjoyable week. Even with the sucky weather and Judd was actually sick most of the time. He was a trooper watching the boys while I was riding and even spending the day stuck in the car with them cheering us on.

Now its time for unpacking, laundry and all the not fun home from vacation stuff.