On August 15th Kathryn and Hannah went to the Feather River Temple:
We have two grandkids just starting college.
Sam drove with his Dad to Utah State in Logan and got settled in.
And Katie moved into Heritage Halls at BYU.
Other continuing college students this year include Matthew, Hannah and Eleanor!
We celebrated our 52nd anniversary on the 17th. Grandpa worked in the temple that day and I wasn't feeling well and couldn't join him, so in the evening we went for a Jamba!
Nathaniel started 5th grade:
Unfortunately there was a little blip a few days later that included
sickness and a helicopter ride.
Visiting Nathaniel at Sutter Hospital in Sacramento.
He is fine now and back to school!
I received a lot of first day of school pictures but not everyone wanted theirs posted, so I decided to just highlight our Seniors:
Sarah
First Grade
Peter
Joshua
Amelia
(Amelia is also a college student taking classes at Butte College
and finishing her high school classes online!)
Bethany celebrated her 12th birthday.
She made and decorated this cake herself!
Our trip to Ukiah wasn't 100% quirky.
One day we drove over to Fort Bragg on the coast.
We especially wanted to see Glass Beach
Glass Beach was a garbage dumping spot for the city of Fort Bragg. In 1967 it was closed and over the decades the biodegradable items disappeared, metal and other objects were removed and the pounding waves tumbled the glass and pottery remaining breaking it up and polishing it.
There was a nice walkway along the bluffs.
It was so great to see the ocean!
I found this bench and you can see my walker trail.
Grandpa went on a lot further.
For lunch we went to the wharf and had some yummy clam chowder
while dining outside. It was very pleasant!
Our last stop before heading inland was at Point Cabrillo Lighthouse.
It was a long hike down and back so only Grandpa did it this time.
We recently returned from a trip to Lake Tahoe.
We stayed in Truckee which was interesting to visit and a short hop to the lake.
We stayed here:
We ate here the first evening. It is called Jax at the Tracks
In 1992 a wealthy entrepreneur purchased this 1948 diner outside of Philly and had it moved to Truckee and he spent 1.2 million dollars restoring it.
Very yummy comfort food!
The old downtown of Truckee has become a lighted-up
upscale area for restaurants and high-end shopping.
In a survey asking which is the most beautiful lake in the country,
Lake Tahoe came in #1 out of 15 on the list!
Lake Tahoe is known for outdoor sports including swimming and hiking in the summer.
Since I was not up for these types of things we had to come up with something I could do.
We found an Audio Tour that I could download to my phone and it would tell interesting things about the places we were passing. It was the perfect thing for me right now!
Since we had a couple of days we decided to drive around the lake clockwise the first day and counterclockwise the second day. It is 72 miles around the entire lake. Each day we stopped at different places and were reminded
of how things look different from different perspectives.
Day 1: A stop on the Nevada side of the lake. Only 1/3 of the lake is in Nevada.
We learned these Fun facts:
1) Lake Tahoe has 2.7 million visitors per year
2) It is the largest alpine lake in North America and 2nd largest in the world
3) It is the 2nd deepest lake in the U.S. Crater Lake is deeper.
4) The water in Lake Tahoe is 99.994 percent pure,
making it one of the purest lakes in the world.
5) Lake Tahoe never freezes.
6) The lake contains approximately 39 trillion gallons, enough to supply everyone in the U.S. with 75 gallons of water per day for five years!
7) The first European to see the lake was John C. Fremont on February 14, 1840.
8) The word "Tahoe" comes from a Washoe Indian word
meaning "Big water" or "Water in a high place"
9)The water from Lake Tahoe never ends up in the ocean. Although the water comes from 63 rivers and tributaries, the Truckee River is the only outlet and it ends up in Nevada at Pyramid Lake.
10) There are 40 public beaches at Lake Tahoe
Also on the first trip we visited Tallac, a place I had never been to at Lake Tahoe.
It is a Historic Site which consists of three estates built between 1894 and 1923. They were the private summer homes of some of California's wealthy families. The Pope, Baldwin and Heller estates have been restored. We walked around a bit and here is some of what we saw:
We ate a late lunch here in Tahoe City at Rosie's.
Day 2
We stopped at Sugar Pine Point which is a place our family went camping one summer.
We also stopped at Eagle Falls Trailhead and Emerald Bay Lookout.
In both cases the parking lots were full and overflowing out onto the street,
and so this came in really handy for us.
We heard on the Audio Tour some interesting stories connected to Emerald Bay.
One of them was about the dozens of sunken ships and boats that are there. Some were wrecks and during one period of time when companies wanted to get rid of a large boat used for touring, instead of paying to have it moved, they sunk it on purpose!
There are so many that there is an underwater trail for Scuba divers to follow!
The granite mountains around the lake are also beautiful!
We finished our 2nd day with a late lunch in King's Beach at the Char Pit.
It was another yummy meal!
Memories of Lake Tahoe
Driving around the lake twice brought back a lot of memories to me. I didn't realize until I got thinking about it all of the connections I have there. In my early teens we rented houses from people in our ward, the Calverts and the Irwins, and sometimes our cousins joined us. We had great times and I remember my Dad renting a boat one year and taking us on rides. We also rented kayaks and went out for hours on the lake. We always made sure to stop at some of the many gift shops to buy a souvenir. Then the larger Spjut family started having some reunions there. One time we rented several homes for all of the families in one development. On our ride this past week I saw the place we turned to get to those houses and the Calvert's house was on the corner and still there.
Here are some pictures of a Spjut reunion. It was held at Northstar not far from Lake Tahoe. Our family is posing in front of the condo we stayed at.
We went to the lake and had lots of fun at the beach.
One evening all of the cousins got together for dinner at
an Italian place we had been to as kids. If you look closely, you can find all of my siblings and their spouses. For Jody it is the very top of her hair only!
Grandpa and I spent one night on our honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. Sometimes while working for the League he had overnight meetings at Lake Tahoe and I went along. One time Grandpa rode his bike around the entire lake! We hosted a Moeller/Bangerter/Harrison reunion at Northstar. And my birthday trip in 2017 was at Lake Tahoe.
More recently we hosted some of our families for a couple of days at Lake Tahoe and made fun memories! We even saw a bear in a parking lot!
2017
2018
August was a great month and Lake Tahoe is a truly magical place!
