And so, my intrepid readers, the week 4 travelogue continues as we leave Death Valley and continue our journey through Pacific Coast States on our way to “The Last Frontier.”
We traveled along many roads through numerous mountain passes and ridges. Our third night of week 4 found us boondocked at a supermarket in the town of Bishop CA. For us it was a beautiful stop as there were snow capped mountains on either side of the roadway and with bright blue skies, the images reminded us a lot of being back in New England and especially the White Mountain region of NH.
Our next destination was Lake Tahoe and we spent 3 nights at the Lake Tahoe RV Resort to allow us time to relax from all the driving. Originally we planned on 2 days drive, 1 day off but found that some locations didn’t work out as well as planned for where we’d take our day off, or that the driving conditions or distance neccessitated a longer rest period. The Lake Tahoe RV Resort is an Encore Park and for those that have stayed at Encore before, know it means extra fees for nothing. When we last stayed at Encore their nightly “resort fee” was $3. Now they’re up to $4. When I asked the folks at the resort what the extra fee was for I got a different answer (local room tax and resort activities). I challenged the manager on the resort activities response since they offered nothing extra at that time of the year.
Another issue I had with Encore is with their Passport America price - in our guidebook it said to call their 800 # to make a reservation, but when I phoned at 1pm on Saturday, no one answered. The Lake Tahoe folks said they couldn’t do the reduced rate themselves, that it had to be a reservation through the main office. When I let them listen to the 800 #‘s recorded messages for 15 minutes with me, the check in desk clerk finally decided that we weren’t going to get an response from Encore for at least 2 days because of it being a weekend and made my reservation. Ah the fun of Encore.
While in Lake Tahoe, we decided to go out for a nice lunch and received recommendations of the casino buffets. We drove in to town and found parking and then tried to find the buffets - all 3 casino buffets were dinner only, so we found a local place for lunch.
After our stay in Lake Tahoe, we headed west across the State of California, passing around Sacremento and then into wine country where we spent the night at Langtry Vineyards. We sampled some of their wines at a wine tasting and ended up buying a bottle for enjoyment later one. Langtry Vineyards was a Harvest Host location - that is, a business that offers boondock camping to a limited number of units. We were surprised to learn that Langtry Vineyards was started by Lilly Langtry, the actress Judge Roy Bean was so enamored with that he named his town in Texas after her.
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