COAST TO COAST 2016: Day 84 - I love Lake Tahoe

Meanwhile we are in California, our last state on our trip. We still are way ahead of schedule and last time we spoke about doing some off route trips. So we did. We left the official 'Western Express' route in Carson City and took our own route to the famous Lake Tahoe. Unfortunatelly there was the Sierra Nevada mountain range waiting for us so we had to do a big steep climb and a little bit of downhill before we reached the lake. What we didn't know so far: It was not our last time crossing this mountain on this street...

But first of all we reached South Lake Tahoe and it was crowded like hell. It was one day before independece day and every single motel was fully booked. We prefered to stay in our tent anyway, but the campgrounds were crowded as well. We didn't have any reservations so we just tried to get a spot somewhere. The first campground had a sign saying "full" on the entrance but we pretended to be illiterate... And after some conversation with the friendly staff we got a so called 'oops-site', which means that something went wrong in the booking system and acutally this site is still empty. Lucky us! So we set up our tent under pine trees next to the lake. Unfortunatelly this place was just for one night so we had to move on the campground the next day. But in the end we spent four nights there.
The next day we met four PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) hikers, two americans and two german guys. So we had some beers and discussed german and american stereotypes all day long. In the evening there was a big firework at the lake, well actually there were three more of them, but they were so far away we could barely see them... after the firework one of the german hikers got his pocket trumpet and played the american national anthem. Everyone on the crowded beach was surprised. No one moved anymore, everyone just listened. When he finished the anthem the crowd went totally nuts and cheered and applauded him. What a performace! When a lady next to us smalltalked to us she noticed that we have an accent and she asked if we even were americans. We replied with 'germans' and her reaction was like: '...wait, Whaaaaat?' Looks like the germans rocked the independence day at Lake Tahoe...

After a couple of nice days at the lake we decided to go further south to get to the Yosemite National Park. So once again, we had to climb the mountain on the street we came from, but this time it was a short climb and a very nice and long 2000ft downhill. It took us two days to reach Lee Vining, a little town on the east gate entrance of the Yosemite. We were almost there, but to get into the National Park we had to climb once again. This time our enemy to defeat was the Tioga Pass. A very steep 3200ft (970m) and 10 mile long climb, with very heavy traffic and very heavy winds. If we were in a videogame, Tioga Pass would have been our final boss before we achieved the holy grail of the Golden Gate Bridge... We had to fight, but we did it. Like every other pass before... And then: The Yosemite. Absolutely stunning, breathtaking and impressive... how many tourists there are! By the way: the landscape was nice as well. ;) But seriously, the Yosemite Park was one of our highlights of our trip. A beautiful landscape, rivers, mountains, wildlife and lakes. Almost no picture can capture this place. We stayed two nights and three days in the park before we decided to carry on. We'll definetly come back to this place some day...

Now we are in the big valley (Great valley? Grand valley?) between the sierras and the pacific coast. We are close to big cities which means that we have heavy traffic all day long. And it is very hot again. In the mountains it was nice and cool, but down here we have three digit weather again... But we are not in a hurry so we take our time. Tomorrow we'll only do about 35 miles to get to a nice campground. So our estimated arrival in San Francisco will be: Monday, July 18th.

By the way: Since we started our trip in mid april, we sang a song from the band 'A' almost every morning when we got on our bikes because the refrain says 'here we go again...' This is a song about the Lake Tahoe and it was in our head the whole trip. This is why we dedicated this post to this song. :)
Here we go again

Lukas and Marian

Hints for cyclists:
- Lake Tahoe, NV/CA - Always worth a visit
- Mono Market, Lee Vining, CA - Best chocolate croissants since france!
- Yosemite National Park, CA - A must see when you are at the west coast area!!! (Make sure you have campground reservations)

Total mileage so far: 6596 km (4096 miles)