Ringing in 2006 Tahoe Style

The whole family rang in 2006 up in Lake Tahoe over a long four day weekend, courtesy of our friends Roger & Joanne. They own a cabin up in Tahoe City, so we trekked up to the Sierras for the second consecutive year. The cabin is right on Lake Tahoe, with an awesome view of the lake from their living room.

It took us about 4.5 hours to drive up on Thursday night. We managed to beat the beat the storm that pounded most of California on our drive, but would experience it once we reached our destination. It rained all day Friday, so even though we were at 6200 feet above sea level, we saw lots of water and little snow.

This was a bit of a drag because there were seven kids to go along with six adults. Everyone started to get a little cabin fever because of the rain. On Saturday we heard that highway 80 was closed because of rock slides just north of where we were located. The rain continued to fall, and at noon the power went out in the cabin.


It finally started to snow on Saturday afternoon, so the kids got to play in the white stuff later that day. There was a small hill in the complex we were staying, so everyone did a little sledding. Ryan and Karsyn loved it.

We had gone grocery shopping the day before and decided to simplify things by buying a couple of frozen lasagna’s. Without any power, we were in a bit of a quandary, because the cabin was equipped with an electric oven. We improvised and used the propane BBQ on the patio and grilled up those lasagna’s. To be honest with you, they came out quite nicely.


So on New Year’s Eve, we enjoyed BBQ’d lasagna, Sonya’s patented Pecan and Cranberry Salad, real garlic bread and a few bottles of some great wine that Roger brought up. All of this by candle light. It was also Sonya's 29th birthday (again!), so she celebrated by knocking me out of two no-limit poker games.

Given the absence of power, we were actually forced to communicate with each other, rather than watch TV all day. It turned out to be one of the nicer New Year’s Eve celebrations that I’ve participated in. Relaxing to say the least.

It snowed over night, so we woke up on New Year’s Day to about 8 inches of new snow. Ryan unfortunately had a bought with some bad milk (we think) and he ended up barfing all over one of the beds in our room. So spent the first morning of the new year, stripping the beds and rinsing sheets. Still had no power, so we couldn’t run the washing machine to clean them up there.


By the time we left (about 1pm on Jan 1), there was no power throughout all of Tahoe City and the snow was falling again. We actually high tailed it out of town a little early for fear of getting stuck on the highway because the next big storm was rolling in.

So, we piled up the car and headed back to the Bay Area. The roads were slick, the traffic was heavy and the wind was howling. Took us about 7.5 hours to get home. A long drive, but well worth it.