Miles 6481-6519: Lake Tahoe, Squaw Valley, and Truckee

7/29

Mom and Dad took our car to the mechanic to get the air conditioning fixed before our eight-and-a-half hour drive to Park City, Utah. Pampam and Grumpy left early for their drive back to San Francisco for their flight, so they could wind through Napa Valley. We stayed at the house with them while they packed and got ready, and then drove our rental car to the bottom of Squaw Valley Resort, where the 1960 Winter Olympics were held. We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain to spend the afternoon. We ate lunch at the grill there and Jackson and I split a grilled chicken, brie, and fig jam sandwich. We started at the pool, which was obviously heated, but still pretty cold. After spending some time swimming and in the hot tub, Jackson and I went to explore the roller-skating rink and Olympic museum. The museum was cool; it was really interesting that such a small town was chosen for the Olympics and seeing the differences between then and now. For instance, ice hockey teams didn’t wear any helmets and there were many less countries involved. We, or I should say, I, went roller skating. Jackson tried it and it definitely wasn’t his thing. I stayed for a good while, just enjoying the silence. The rink was right near the edge of the cliff and had some really amazing views. We went back down to the pool and hot tub, swam, and changed. The gondola ride down was so much cooler than the way up because we managed to get near a window. There were some really amazing view of hills, mountains, and old Olympic complexes. Apparently Walt Disney designed the opening and closing ceremonies. While he was in Squaw Valley, he made sketches of rock stacks on the mountains and used them to design some of his rides. We went into Truckee and walked through some shops, including a cool, little bookstore. I got an awesome shirt that said “Climb like a girl.”. We got ice cream (raspberry sorbet for me) and then went back to our Airbnb. We got dinner things at Safeway. While we ate, we turned on the TV and the Parent Trap happened to be on. My dad had never seen it before and it was hilarious watching him. He was exasperated, saying it was so unrealistic for the parents to have separated their twin daughters at birth. I did some of that astronomy research, drawing a constellation/star map. We got ready for bed and then went out on the porch. We were able to identify about half of the constellations I had drawn, but some of them were behind trees or too big and complicated to find in our limited time. We got in bed, our last night in Lake Tahoe.