So, last Thursday we decided to drive west to Auburn, CA. It's about 2 hours from Tahoe and it's lower in elevation. The weather was P.E.R.F.E.C.T. Sunny. Temps in the mid 60's. It was t-shirt and shorts weather. I didn't know much about Auburn before we went but it's actually a very pretty area. Lots of rolling hills and serpentine roads... and beautiful views of vineyards from the hilltops.
The American River is a beautiful blue color.
The ride was a pretty short 3 miles uphill and a little over 4 miles downhill. It was a pretty mellow trail alongside a river for most of the ride. There were some surprises on the trail... like a LONG pitch black tunnel... and lots of rocky terrain very close to steep ledges that dropped down to the river. The GoPro did a great job of capturing Mike's latest crash(see the videos at the end of this post). He went straight over the handlebars and landed on his back. Luckily there were no injuries.
After the bike ride, naturally we were hungry. A quick search on our phones revealed there was a Chic-fil-A about 10 minutes away!!! For those of you in the East, this may not seem very exciting because there is a Chic-fil-A in every town (almost), but for us it is a rare occasion now. As if dinner wasn't exciting enough... guess what else we found????
That's right... KRISPY KREME! And they just turned on the "Hot Now" sign when we pulled up. It was meant to be. So, we quickly consumed every SINGLE calorie we had burned on the bike ride (and a few extra calories I'm sure). Thank goodness we didn't set New Year's Resolutions to lose weight! We would be off to a bad start.
The following day we decided to take advantage of the calm Lake (and lack of snow) by paddleboarding. It was about 40-ish degrees out and sunny so we loaded up the boards and headed down to Cave Rock. It was a short paddle, but the video below gives you an idea of what it looked like. We had never paddled that stretch of shoreline before so it was a new adventure for us. We saw lots of million dollar dream homes, and we even paddled under someone's personal little bridge connecting their house to a small rock island.
This past week was a normal work week for me. Followed by a relaxing weekend. Friday, we had a day date... greek food for lunch and a drive by Emerald Bay.
And Saturday... a snow storm rolled in... finally! It's only supposed to bring a few inches and we need a few feet to catch up to where we are "supposed to be."
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| Despite the rough weather, the water is still crystal clear. |
We feel very blessed already in 2014. There has been so much going on with friends and family in the east and my thoughts have been consumed with them lately. I am constantly reminded how short life can be and to live every day to it's fullest potential.
Mike's crash:
A long, unexpected tunnel:
Paddling Lake Tahoe:
[I apologize for the length of the videos. I actually clipped a lot of them and made 1 video with music... but it's formatted wrong and youtube won't upload it. Sadly, I just got frustrated, gave up, and decided to just post the unedited videos.]
