2003/10 Lassen Peak trip - Lake Tahoe |
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I had to work on the Monday, with two presentations. It was nice to see that we had more customers attending than in Baltimore. The sessions went quite well. One thing I’ve noticed is that most of our technical people have developed their own style and patter and tell a good story, whereas the marketing people always seem to be struggling. This time, the marketing managers actually read their presentations, a technique guaranteed to drive any audience away, those that are still conscious anyway. Only at our company could this happen!
Tuesday was much the same, though I managed to get out for a few minutes of shopping at the REI camping store. It was 95 degrees outside in mid afternoon, a record high temperature for this time of year. Reno is at 5000ft and usually much cooler than Vegas and the rest of Nevada. We had a reception for the customers that evening, with a few eats and a cash bar, but a pale imitation of how it was when the company had enough money to rent a palace or town hall for a banquet.
By Wednesday I’d had enough of living and eating in a casino so I played hooky and took off long before dawn and drove up to Lake Tahoe to watch the sun rise over the mountains. Tahoe can be beautiful in the right light but this time it was a bit hazy from a couple of fires out west. The north side of the lake, up in the High Chaparral, is where Bonanza was filmed, and the film set of the Ponderosa Ranch is still there.
There are two towns on the south side of the lake, Lake Tahoe in Nevada and South Tahoe in California. Casinos are only legal in Nevada, so Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe is right on the state line, as close to California as it can get.
I passed all that junk by and headed around the lake to Emerald Bay, a gorgeous part of the lake, and then 
hiked into the Desolation Wilderness and up to Eagle Falls, puffing a bit up at 8000ft. They looked quite spectacular in the picture in my hotel room, but when I got there I couldn’t actually find any water, though I could hear it gurgling somewhere under the rocks! It was worth the hike anyway for the view of the mountains. The Sierras are granite mountains, a polished silver grey, beautiful in any light. From there I had a fast drive back to Reno to meet with a customer and to sit in on a few presentations and look interested.