Lake Tahoe

Amidst all the house stuff I've been dealing with lately, I had a board of directors (BOD) meeting last weekend.  The last one I went to, which was at the end of February, was in Palm Springs, and I never actually got to see Palm Springs.  We have a new CEO and we spent two 9-hour days in a hotel basement conference room doing strategic planning.  We worked HARD.  They did feed us well and we had receptions the three evenings, but we never saw the sun or Palm Springs.  So I wasn't that excited about going to Lake Tahoe for this BOD meeting because I figured I'd miss seeing Tahoe too.  But this first picture is the view out my hotel window.   The place is simply unbelievably beautiful.

On top of that, luckily we managed to finish mid-afternoon on Saturday and all took a sailboat cruise on Lake Tahoe. This little picture is the back end of the boat.  The cruise was awesome.  Beyond doubt, Lake Tahoe is some of the most beautiful country in the world.  As pretty as my pictures are, the reality is much more amazing.  And the water is so clear.  They say they measure it, and you can see a white dinner plate that's 70 feet deep in the water.  Really, I am not equal to the task of describing the place.

It was funny too.  I didn't take any warm clothes with me.  According to my agenda and schedule, I should have been outside exactly 5 minutes, walking across the street to the restaurant.  Who needs warm clothes for that?  But if the daily high temperature is 65, and you're going sailing out on a BIG lake with a pretty good wind - well let's just say, I knew it would be too cold for this Texas girl.  Luckily for us, the hotel gift shop was having an end-of-season sale on their hooded sweatshirts - two for $40.00.  So about 2/3rds of the BOD went in pairs and bought sweatshirts.  We were all so cute in our Lake Tahoe sweatshirts, but they were warm and make a nice souvenir of the trip. 

The boat we were on was a catamaran.  We weren't the only people on it because the thing was big enough to easily hold 50 people, but we made up the majority of the people on board.  The crew served us wine or beer or non-alcoholic drinks if you were so inclined.  And they served fruit and cheese and crackers.  And the sun was brilliant, the sky was clear blue, the lake was deeper blue, and the pines were a deep green.  Really just so lovely it almost makes your heart hurt to see it.

We looked at the houses along the shore when we were close enough to see them.  The local people say that a high end house at Lake Tahoe runs between $10 million and $100 million!  I cannot even imagine.  Below $1 million is considered low end.  It's pretty likely that I will not ever be owning a house there.  On the other hand 45 minutes away in Reno, the housing market has crashed about the worst of anywhere in the country.  A shuttle driver told me his friend bought a house there for about $800,000 at the height of the market and sold it after the crash for $350,000.  I can't imagine having to sell my house for less than half of what I paid for it.   

 Anyway it was a fun trip, and it was nice to get away from my own housing stuff, if only for a few days.