What More is There?

I mean really: penguins and bling.  C'mon.

Today was a bit of a cram-it-all-in sort of day.  We started out in Truckee, where we ate at the oft-recommended Squeeze In (I had French toast!) and explored the "historic downtown", which probably would have been of greater interest to us if either Nathan or myself were even remotely "shoppers".  But we're not, soooo... that sort of thing can only entertain us for so long.

From there we indulged my macabre side by visiting Donner Memorial State Park, where I proceeded to depress the crap out of myself.  Woo?  On the upside, it did provide me with fodder (sorry) for one of my stories, which was the underlying point of my insistence on going there.  Plus we did a little nature walk, which I gleefully narrated.  (Increasing my husband's Suffering Levels is always highly entertaining).

Then it was drive, drive, drive, all the way down to Emerald Bay, because a) we'd heard it's gorgeous and b) I wanted to see Vikingsholm.  After a descending hike that reminded us (rather ominously) of the one down to Crater Lake, we discovered that we'd gotten there just in time to miss the last tour of the day, so instead we toured the museum, went scrambling up to see Lower Eagle Falls, and then walked around the outside of Vikingsholm peering in windows like the creepers we are.

(As it turns out, the hike back up wasn't quite so bad as the one at Crater Lake, but I think that was mostly due to it being well-shaded.)