The Saga of Lake Tahoe…

I’ve been visiting Lake Tahoe my entire life. Just a glimpse on the timeline of Lake Tahoe of course. Furthermore, Grammy Marge’s cabin, at Water’s Edge on the West Shore, became the family home in 1968 and from what I can tell, Lake Tahoe was only slightly different back then. However, Tahoe has quite an interesting history…and you can read all about it in The Saga of Lake Tahoe ~ which sits on the coffee table at Grammy’s Cabin. If you’re not into reading, or simply prefer story telling, just get my dad a scotch on the rocks, a couple of logs, and listen to his version of the Saga of Lake Tahoe as he builds a fire and sips on the 3rd most popular beverage at the Grammy’s cabin’ (behind sparkling wine and beer)…but you’ll have to get that version from my dad. This, is my update to the Saga 😉

Serena & I embarked upon a journey across the Lake with the Tahoe Gal || shout out, awesome cruise, awesome crew, and we didn’t have to cross the state line into South Shore (gross, right?) || Truth be told, my ears perked up when our captain started the cruise by noting ‘The Saga of Lake Tahoe” within one minute. That’s right, my hat is off to our Captain for the afternoon, Captain Ronald: a wealth of knowledge bearing a slight resemblance to Captain Ron, equipped with a captain’s hat just as you’d expect.

Our destination for the day: Emerald Bay. Presuming you’ve never been, you may ask yourself, “why is Emerald Bay so special?” Well, I’ll attempt an answer. First, Emerald Bay is a national landmark, so…you better go see it quick before Trump rescinds the first ever underwater national landmark and looters go nuts! The true reason that Emerald Bay is special, is that while Lake Tahoe was formed by a divergent plate boundary, Emerald Bay was formed many years later (a few million?) by glaciation. While there are many lakes in the area that are formed by glaciation, Emerald Bay was the only to connect to Lake Tahoe! The relatively shallow bay is the reason that the bay has the Emerald color…something about physics…anyway, here are some pics to better describe it’s glory!

(Emerald Bay as seen from HWY 89 on a previous trip)

(Emerald Bay from the beach by the mouth of the river ~ pic from 2014)

Captain Ronald hit us with all kinds of good stories along the way ~ he told us about the tea house on Fannette Island, which lies within Emerald Bay and is in fact the only island on Lake Tahoe. This tiny island, was once known as Coquette Island, and hosted a few crazies over the year: i.e., the lady who built a stone room for tea parties, and the drunk who tried to sail back from Tahoe City during a storm and was lost along the way…now he haunts the island.