Lake Tahoe

Thunderbird Lodge

What a day! It started innocently enough. We took Nevada 341 up to Incline Village and after missing the visiting center on our first pass, we returned to it. This is where the tour to the Thunderbird Lodge begins. George Whittel, who inherited a large fortune built this private retreat in 1936. He actually had bought 27 miles of shoreline of Lake Tahoe from several timber companies after they had logged all the trees off this land (to serve as timbers in the Comstock mines). He was quite the eccentric; he had vowed ‘never to work a day in his life’ and had succeeded. He joined the circus, married a chorus girl, spent time overseas, until later in life when he settled down with his third wife, a French heiress. Later the State of Nevada took much of his Lake Tahoe property by eminent domain to create several state parks. In 1959, he sold some of his property to develop for what became the town of Incline Village. Thunderbird Lodge itself is in the “old Tahoe” style of architecture, which blends well into the granite rock surrounding the lodge. The lodge is rather small with only 2 bedrooms plus servants quarters underneath. A man of privacy, he had optical sensors around the property to detect people approaching. The lodge has a safe, several closets, and an elevator, all hidden by the wooden paneling. The man loved tunnels, so there is a 600 foot tunnel with a ‘dungeon’ that lead from the house to the boat house. Here is where his beautiful 55 foot mahogany hulled boat is kept. 

The Boat

             After lunch we took the scenic route to get to our campground east of Yosemite National Park. Well, that was my intention, but we started heading down California 4 only to find a sign warning of 24% grades, not recommended for trailers. So we decided to head a little more South to catch the next scenic road across the Sierras. This meant we had to cross another pass, only to end up about 35 miles south of where we started in Reno, Nevada. This next route was California 108, which also had a warning about trailers. Meanwhile it was time for a tank of gas $5.09/gallon, a new record. So we went south again to cross using California 120, which eventually traverses Yosemite from East to West. Along the way, we got to see Mono Lake, which I had seen many times from the air on the HP corporate jet, but never from the ground. It’s one of those lakes with no outlets, so it is filled with salt. California 120 only had a sign “Difficult for trailers” – well that’s because the road went up quite rapidly, we often were slowed down to 35 mph. Tioga pass at 9000 feet is actually at the entrance to the park, so it was primarily downhill from there. By this time it was about 6 PM so we had about an hour and half of daylight left and we were heading directly into the sun for much of the time. Well, I’ve always wanted to take this route, lots of interesting scenery: the steep slopes up to the pass and lots interesting granite formations on the way down. We left the park at dark and after another 25 miles of canyon highway; we reached our campground about 8:15 PM and had dinner by 9. What a long day!