Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Hiking To the Waterfall

Summer here at Tahoe basin is not my favorite. The weather is lovely, but everywhere you go, it's crowded with people. This town's economy depends on tourism no doubt. I hate to bitch but sometimes the behaviors of some tourists can really foul the mood. We are all trying to do our best not to let a few bad behaviors making us the rude and unwelcoming locals. But we'd also appreciate it if some tourists can refrain from the mentality of "I spent the money, therefore I can treat you like sh#t."
Here are the things that really bother me:
1. People who party really late out on the balcony/backyard when they renting a house in residential neighborhood. Sorry, some of us still have to get up and go to work and you being a loud drunk really makes it hard to fall asleep.

2. Tossing cigarette butts. WTF? we just had a huge fire two years ago that burned down hundreds of houses. Seriously, why every year some tourist had to toss a cigarette butt out the Gondola at Heavenly and started a fire? Few years ago, my neighbor had to put out a fire that just started right by her house and called the FD. We live right night to the forest land, and I cannot tell you how many cigarette butts I'd spot in summer. What's really horrible is the day after July 4th, our beautiful beaches are littered with trash. Some people come to this pristine, beautiful land just so they can trash it.

3. Leaving trash out. We have serious bear problems (it actually should be called human problems.) That is why there are bear cans at every house for trash days. You must put your trash into these cans and lock them so your trash won't attract bears. The problems with bears learning to depend on human trash for food is that if a bear get spotted 3 times it will be put down. You are killing the bears by leaving your trash out. I'm always shocked at the amount of trash tourists have for a weekend stay at the vacation house next to ours. Every unit in our area has huge bear proof trash can. Paul and I usually have one bag of trash each week that doesn't even fill up 1/3 of the capacity. Yet when the vacationers stayed for 3 days,their trash would always be overflowed which means they couldn't close the bin and that completely defeated the purpose of bear proof. How can people create that much trash in such a short time???

4. Driving like complete idiots. OK, so these people probably drive like this at home, but that's no excuse. You DON"T stop in the middle of the road just because you are lost!!! You don't block 2 lanes just because all of sudden you realize this is where you should turn left!!! Please drive the speed limit. When it says 35 mph, please don't drive 5 mph on the fast lane because you're sightseeing. Some of us actually have to go to work.

End of rant.


Summer here means people. Even when you go for a hike you can't avoid running into endless numbers of hikers. That's why I prefer Hope Valley. When I think of paradise on earth, hope valley is pretty close to it. It's right outside of the Tahoe Basin and absolutely stunning in its landscape. I always prefer going there and around Carson Pass area than staying at the basin.

I've been going crazy trying to wait for phone calls that never came about some medical results. It has been endless run around on the phone. I couldn't stand it anymore so we went for a drive yesterday. I just wanted to go hang out by the creek near Markleeville Hot Spring.

There was a little delay because of the summer roadwork on 89. Fortunately we didn't have to wait too long.

Whenever I drive through Hope Valley area, I just feel all the stress and worries washed away from me.

We hiked out to the creek from the Hot Spring parking lot. After hanging out on the rock for a while we decided to hike upstream in the water. That was a bit challenge in my flip flop. We did that for about ten minutes, then swtiched to our hiking boots and hiked back on the trail through the woods. Then we just followed the trail to "Waterfall." Somewhere new for us.

It was such a pleasant and super easy trail. The trail was flat most of the way until the last small section of hiking up rocks to get to the small waterfall. It was a charming waterfall. Unlike Cascade or Eagle falls over at Tahoe Basin's Desolation Wilderness, this was a small scale but with little pools of water as it falls down in sections.

We were both glad to have gone for the hike. It was only 1.5 miles each way. But just what we needed for some de-stress.









No comments:

Post a Comment