Weekend in Tahoe

This weekend, we went to Lake Tahoe. Vero wanted to check out the resorts and Lucie wanted to see a real winter, complete with snow and everything that lives on it (penguins and polar bears).
We grabbed an interesting first cache in Eldorado Hills: Pony Express # 2 Duroc House. There was no traffic and we arrived in Tahoe at the beginning of Saturday afternoon. We looked for a snow park for the kids to play in the snow near Fallen Leaf Lake and it turned out that Lexxy's Kids Kache was only 400 meters from where we parked. Cool! Snow play and a cache. What I didn't realize is that 400 meters walking in more than 1 foot of snow, at an altitude of 1900 meters is pretty exhausting, especially with a kid in tow. Lucie and I finally made it and found our very first snow-burried cache. We did some trading and went back to do more snow angels.
We then crossed Hwy 91 to stroll along Taylor creek and grab the very promising multi named Stream Profile Nature Walk. Too much snow made this a difficult cache to get to, and the most interesting stages of the interpretive trail were closed. I eventually got to sign the log.
Pretty tired, we decided to pass on the two nearby caches, check-in at the motel, have a nice fondue at the Swiss Chalet, and call it a day. But not without playing a little bit the slot machines. No luck at Harrah's, I crossed the street and went to Harvey's... I played one of their 25 cents machines and got quite lucky since the machine decided to spit out 750 credits, more than $185. I cashed out and went to bed, with enough money to pay for the motel room and the dinner at the Swiss Chalet. Cool!
One of the things I wanted to do in Tahoe was to find a cache in Nevada and this is the first thing we did on Sunday morning. I wanted to avoid walking in the snow again so I opted for a drive-up virtual cache along the lake 12 km from South Lake Tahoe, Logan Shoals Vista Point. Further away than some other caches, but no effort - good. We enjoyed the view. Vero took the required pic of me at the site, and off we went...
Next step : Heavenly... We rid the Gondola. Very impressive view of the lake. There was no cache I could grab up there but we played with the kids in Adventure Peak and they had a blast. After enjoying the altitude for a while, we rid back to the lake and had a last lunch at Denny's before leaving.
Not without trying FST: Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death though. I didn't plan to spend too much time on it so I was ready to DNF this cache. Turns out that I found it very quickly, and we could leave the area and go back to our Valley.

A stop for coffee in Placerville made for a nice suprise. We didn't know this was such a pleasant town. Old style western... Very nice... Of course, there was a cache (Snowshoe) in the historic center, and of course, I went for it. I even, by chance, noticed the hangman which is apparently a landmark of Placerville.
As soon as I saw it, I remembered that someone used this Placerville "feature" as a cache hint to indicate that the cache was "hanging". Everything makes sense now.

Few hours later, we were back home, tired but happy about our weekend. Vero was happy, the kids had a blast and were tired, I grabbed 6 caches, including my first Nevada one (3 states total now), and we got a little more cash in our pockets.