Meeting the Family in San Francisco

Tuesday August 28: Yesterday we left Wendover, NV and had drive straight through Nevada to get to the Lake Tahoe area in California. We did not have a great time during this drive because Nevada (at least the northern part that we were going through) was reeeally boring and there was nothing but small towns which consisted only of fast food restaurants and casinos. (We did however pass the 4000 mile mark during this leg of the trip.) We also saw some land that had obviously been hit by a forest fire, which is what the picture to the right. So, after around 6.5 hours we made it to Truckee, CA which is near Lake Tahoe (like 15 minutes from the lake) and decided to camp along the Truckee River which was beautiful. We also went to see the lake, which was also beautiful and was the most amazing deep blue color. In the evening Jeff went fly fishing in the river, and here is what he wants to tell about that: Nothing like fishing Yellowstone, but the Truckee did yield one fish for me. I was able to catch a small Rainbow Trout, which was exciting because that added another species of fish to the list of fish I caught on the trip. Although it was small its colors made up for its size.
Our campsite was really nice but I (Emily) was a little nervous there because we were pretty far away from other people and the ranger warned us that there were bears in the area. (This picture is when Jeff gave me his stuffed animal bear to hold to make me feel better.) In the end we still didn't see any bears and we got up this morning and packed up to drive to San Francisco. We got to the city around 1 pm and met up with my dad and my sister Madeline, and then a bit later we picked up my other sister from her school (Univ. of San Francisco). We walked around for a while and went to Chinatown, and then had dinner and came back to the hotel to relax for the night. Tomorrow we'll do a lot more sightseeing and will take lots of pictures to post! For now we are just happy to have a place to put our stuff down for a few days and not have to get back in the car tomorrow.