Day 3 | 08/31/2018 Lake Tahoe to Virginia City

When the day starts like this, you quickly forget that it was 25 degrees colder outside than yesterday evening. We are at Lake Tahoe at an altitude of over 3,000 meters, and it can get cold at night. When we stuck our noses out the door early this morning, it was a whopping 1 degree Celsius.. brrrrr. But it was already forecasted to be 25 degrees by noon, and it was. The plan for today is to circle around Lake Tahoe and then make the next stop in Virginia City. But we already had the actual highlight earlier. Mom has been talking about her childhood memories of the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley all these days, and it was practically on the way. As a sports fan, I didn't want to miss it either. Squaw Valley, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, is incredibly beautiful and idyllic. In a valley, alongside a golf course and parking lots, there is a cozy little town that served as the base for the Olympic Village in 1960.

Today, they are geared towards tourism. We didn't have to think long when we bought tickets for the cable car up to the alpine ski resort. $49 was a good investment. The ride up was already an experience. Up there, Anne-Marie, who spoke excellent German because she had a German mother and also married a German man, told us that in winter and on holidays like Labor Day on the coming Monday or on July 4th, it's a madhouse here. Otherwise, it's more laid-back like today. Anne-Marie chauffeured me through a labyrinth of levels and various lifts, to the viewing platform, the Olympic Museum, and a restaurant. I treated myself to a delicious ice cream there. The view up here was fantastic. It must be a paradise for hikers, and for those who aren't keen on that, they can relax by the pool with cocktails...

By noon, we took the Air Tram back down because we still wanted to continue. We now left the amazingly beautiful area around Lake Tahoe and headed towards Carson City. The navigation system was supposed to show us the shortest way to Virginia City so that we could see more of the countryside and people off the freeway. Unfortunately, it led us onto a road where we had to raise the white flag.