Welcome to Day 5 of our vacation adventure. It is the 4th of July and we are excited to take on the day! We are now heading to Lake Tahoe from the Pioneer Inn to see the firework show, which we were told it was one of the top five places to see fireworks. None of us have even been to Lake Tahoe so this will be an experience for all of us to remember. We all really enjoyed the relaxing Inn we stayed at so we were a little bummed to have to leave that place. I do have to say the drive up to Tahoe was beautiful though. Most of it was forest and we passed so many new lakes that were just amazing scenery along the way. A couple of the photos below were the location we were driving through and Silver Lake. I had to get out and take some pictures. It was just too awesome not to share with you all. Also, yes that is snow on the mountains!

We also drove through Kirkwood, CA that was home to Caples Lake. This lake was also beautiful with the pine trees all around and the tall mountains in the background. I wish we didn’t have to drive through quickly and had more time to enjoy the view. This one of the best drives we have had so far for the scenery part of the vacation. It was stunning views, mountains, lakes, and dams to visit. We had the chance to climb up Caples Lake small dam to see the sights and how it worked. It wasn’t a big dam, but it was so cool to see. The pictures don’t do any of this justice, I swear!

We made it to South Lake Tahoe, and it was super awesome to see. There were tons of boats, people in canoes, kids playing on the beach, and people set up with tents on the side of the lake ready to hold spots for fireworks. I was a little in shock how many people were already setting up for the evening and its only lunchtime. We ate at a little cafe called Bear Beach Cafe that had a view of the lake right across the street. The lake was so big that you could barely see the mountains on the other side where the lake ends. It made you feel like you were at the ocean. It was a different sort of feeling. I have to say the most impressive thing to me was how decked out people were in 4th of July gear! I mean these were my type of people! Haha! Everyone had hats, shirts, swimsuits, coverups, headbands…. decked out in red, white and blue. It was super cool!

Lake Tahoe was definitely a spot for the younger crowds though. I’d say that it is more of a party town for the 20-30’s crowds. Also, everything seemed to be really expensive whether it be hotels, food, shopping, parking…etc. After eating lunch we couldn’t check into our hotel yet. So we decided to go walk around the shops they had. That was pretty neat and we stayed for about 2 hours. We even found a car show while we were there. It literally never fails, no matter where we go, we find a car show to attend. I think this is part of being a boy mom. I had a lot of fun just looking around and we got some Coldstone Icecream! It was now almost 3 pm so we planned to go check into the hotel so we could look around for a spot for fireworks. Also, let me mention the entire time we are in Tahoe our cellphones showed bars and service but would not work at all. It was the strangest thing ever!

We got to our hotel which cost us around $200 to stay at for the night. Let me tell you, on hotels.com it looked WAY nicer than it did in person. When we got there the guy barely could speak English, and the front office was just plain gross! We got up to the hotel room and couldn’t even get the door open. Travis had to run into the door to get it to open up. The room was okay looking. It was run down, furniture was beaten up, the beds were crappy, but at the time we decided to deal with it as we won’t be staying long. The bathroom was so disgusting we all opted in waiting to the next stop to even shower. I also went up to the front office to talk to them about the Wifi they had and could barely even understand what he was telling me. At this point, I was NOT happy with this outcome and the kids were nothing but complaining. So we got ready for the evening and took off to the beach by the lake.

We found a spot by cabins, a marina, and the beach to set up our chairs for the firework display. We got there around 5 pm and the fireworks don’t start until 10 pm here in Tahoe. The chairs got set up and we walked over to the restaurant to get some dinner. It was SO delicious! I got some fresh fish and loved it. No one likes to eat fish in my household so this was a nice treat for myself. It also gave us a break from just sitting in our chairs with no wifi service. I did get to edit pictures for the blog during this time which was helpful. The kids took their shoes off and played in the sand for a good amount of time before it started to get dark. Once the sun went down the water in the lake made the water chilly! We were not prepared for the temperature to drop down at all but overall the waiting didn’t go as bad as we expected.

The fireworks were amazing in my opinion. I really enjoyed them. It was hard because we didn’t know which direction they were going to come from so the area we went to was a little further than Travis was hoping. In all honesty, we were fairly close and could see them super good. There were way more fireworks than back at home and we were closer than we normally are for the Schnepf Farm ones by the house. I wish my camera let me grab some pictures but it was too dark for them to even turn out at all. They put on a really good show but by the time it was over its pitch black and everyone is trying to clean up their area. That was hard and funny to watch all at the same time. The walk back to the vehicle was like a marathon. The traffic wasn’t even that bad getting back to the hotel either. I was a little shocked because Tahoe had a lot of people there and traffic was pretty crazy during the day. We got back around 1130pm and suffered through a long night at the disgusting hotel. We were determined to get out of there ASAP.

We woke up the next morning, checked out and headed out for Mammoth Lake Area. On the way out we stopped at a Big 5 to grab some new shoes for Travis since he didn’t bring good tennis shoes to be walking so much and his feet were killing him.  I brought myself three pairs of different shoes for every occasion. Haha! We found some rather quickly which was excellent. We also stopped at a craft show at the local middle school. We saw some cool glass made earrings and a new purse. Yep, I’m a little spoiled. It was super fun to get out and walk around and look at all the neat items. We enjoy doing things like that together. We got in the truck and went on our way… next day… next adventure! Stay tuned.

PS. We also took a couple of spiders from the hotel with us. We found one on Travis’ back when we went to breakfast. This place was ridiculous. I left the hotel a crappy review on hotel.com once I got service. Talking to the front desk was impossible. I spoke with hotels.com on Monday 7/9, and I ended up getting $80 for credit to another hotel as the customer service rep spent 20 minutes trying to get ahold of the hotel to discuss the problem with no luck of them even answering the phone. I usually don’t do things like this, but in this case, it was over the top.