USA - Lake Tahoe10.12.97 - Lake TahoeWe somehow got an excellent deal on the bus fair to Lake Tahoe. We paid US$24 to catch the bus there, but we got $10 back in (what was meant to be) Casino credit -- though we managed to get it in cash. We also got a $3 meal voucher in the restaurant so the ticket effectively only ended costing us $11 return! Despite everyone's stories about Greyhound busses and the people that frequent them, we found the bus to be fine!
We stayed in a funny little motel we had booked from SF and got up early the next day to start our sole day of skiing. 11.12.97 - Lake Tahoe (day 2)We had breakfast at one of the casinos that cost us only $2 but which consisted of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns and hot chocolate. American portions are so large we quite often find ourselves being unable to complete them!We hired our ski gear (all of it, since we didn't exactly come prepared for skiing) and caught the free shuttle bus into Heavenly resort. We thought our travels might have been in vain when it seemed the whole mountain was closed due to high winds. Luckily they opened the lower runs up so we could ski them until the rest of the mountain opened.
We were planning on going out that night but in the end we were too exhausted after a very full day of skiing so we just went back to the motel and watched a James Bond special on cable-tv -- Non-Stop-Bond! 12.12.97 - Lake Tahoe (day 3)We woke up too late the next day to get the same $2 breakfast deal we had the day before. After that bad start we went in search of some nice views of the Lake to take photos of, but there was a fence around the whole of the lake with barbed wire so we couldn't really get close enough.
The bus home turned out to be quite crowded. I bought a newspaper to read on the way back to SF but it turned out to be full of the same levels of shit as we found on the 42 TV channels. There was two black-American girls sitting behind me on the bus and I found it quite amusing to listen to their Ricky-Lake-esque talking style. It was all "sista", "girlfriend" and "ho'" the whole way home. We arrived back in the city around 9pm and it was really starting to liven up - we would have liked to have stayed in there but the public transport system in SF is so bad that, had we stayed any later, we would not have been able to get home save an expensive taxi ride. We were beginning to regret our free but inconvenient accommodation arrangements. It'd be nice to meet some more people - backpackers especially - can't wait for Europe!
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