NORTH SHORE Incline Village, Crystal Bay, Kings Beach and Tahoe Vista are some of the North Shore villages. We drove through on a Monday, so there wasn't too much traffic, except for the butterflies. Zillions and zillions of Tortoiseshell butterflies flittering and fluttering through the trees and over the highway. My car was a bloody mess after experiencing the largest migration of these orange and black critters since the 70's. Very strange. Here are some stories: http://www.kxtv10.com/storyfull1.asp?id=7741 http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/ 10322944p-11243035c.html We headed north to Truckee for lunch since it's only about 13 miles from Tahoe Vista and we'd never been there before. A steep drive over the mountain and beautiful meadows and valleys on the other side. You go right by Northstar Ski Area. Truckee didn't impress me. A bit like Cambria for artsy stuff and high prices. A few sets of railroad tracks parallel the main street, so you get the flavor of the old west. Most of the buildings are old and nicely restored. We ate at a 50's diner, then skeedaddled back to Tahoe. It's all twists and turns going south on the west side of the lake. If you're not careful, you'll miss the turn (like we did) to stay on Hwy 89 and end up enjoying the Truckee River on your left and all the rafters wending their way west. The river is extremely slow here as it flows out of Lake Tahoe (the only river that exits from the lake). Sorry, but I was too busy trying to find a place to U-turn and didn't get any pictures. Here's a token shot I pulled off of a website. Multiply the rafts by 100 and you get an idea of what Monday was like --- bumper boats. It was laughable. I'm sure the raft rental places are laughing all the way to the bank. It costs about $75 per person to do this!     BACK TO CALIFORNIA COLOR PAGE BACK TO THE PR-USA HOMEPAGE

EMERALD BAY We finally arrived at our original destination, Emerald Bay. Depending on the cloud composition, time of day and location, you can take some knockout photos here. Unfortunately, we were there about 5 p.m. and there were no striking clouds. An only blue sky makes photographer's cry. Parking was pretty nonexistent. Absolutely nothing in the main parking lot. A bit further down the road was a trailhead that offered one or two openings. Then you had to pray hard before crossing the highway (on a mean curve). At least the place wasn't crawling with people.