Exploring

The girls all decided to ski today, and I decided I needed some alone time to poke around.
As usual, I picked a direction and followed my inner voice that says "Turn here".

Before too long I found myself pulling into a marina looking for a place to turn around, and that place was the parking lot for a nature preserve!
Score.

On the walk out I shot infrared with the F828:








It was a wetlands reclamation project, and I didn't recognize most of the species of plants, so that was really cool.
On the way back to our rental car (a Chevy Tahoe, of course) I switched to shooting color with the Alpha 200:






There are two guys fishing this pond that I tried to hide with bushes, but you can Waldo one of them. They were drunk at 11am and singing silly songs until one noticed me and told his buddy "That guy's taking pictures of us" like he was pissed. I just kept walking, glad that they were now quiet.


It got interesting when it started looking like the ground was smoking. Man, the weather here changes constantly and quickly even on the ground, let alone up on the mountains. Love it.
These pics were all from 11am to noon, and you couldn't see the lake from 100 yds--I was bundled up. At 9am the girls rode the gondola above the clouds and it was clear and hot.




Here's some other stuff from later in the day.





Tomorrow we finally get to sleep late!
Hopefully taking a boat tour of the lake for more photo ops.
If not I'll find something else worth shooting on our last day in Tahoe.



PS: These new slot machines don't make any sense at all.
I would have tried gambling with a cup full of quarters, a big handle you pull, and spinning wheels, but these things are dumb.

In Thin Air

Up bright and early again, and we all went up Heavenly.


The gondola ride is nuts. I'm not fond of heights, but being enclosed isn't too bad.
Screw that chairlift thing, though.

Most of the way up there's an observation deck so we got out to sightsee.
It was WAY colder than down below, and snowing a little.



Gotta represent.

Up at the lodge level it was snowing harder for a little while.


Time to show off our hats:

Sylvia found a SPURS hat by Adidas at Academy a few weeks ago.

I wanted something a little wilder, or a different SPURS hat, and that took longer to find.
Then, at a different Academy we found mine:

A mohawk AND Spurs logo?
And half-price?
More than I could have hoped for...gonna wear it to a game someday.

We had planned to just sled on the innertubes, but it had gotten icy and windy so they shut that down for safety reasons. Bummer.
Then we chatted with the staff and got a full refund on the gondola rides, so we're going up again tomorrow and now all the girls have decided to ski.
If anything I'll sled, or just take pics and hang out at the lodge.
We spent a couple hours there today and it was nice if you like $10 pints of beer.
(I had a sandwich in my pocket + a flask of bourbon, so there)

The previous gondola photo is pretty tame.
A lot of the ride was more like this:



Tonight we went to dinner in the nicest restaurant at Harrah's.
Also pricey but good.
Then the girls played in the casino.
I was the big winner--put $3 in a machine and won a bottle of Aquafina.
Quit while I was ahead, proving that beginner's luck is real.