First Stop: Lake Tahoe
Posted on August 22, 2007
To the uninitiated, Lake Tahoe might as well be Lake Winapantonka. Or Lake Kitchamabitcha. Or the Goodship Lollypop. Who cares about its ethereal beauty? That its still waters served as a spiritual sanctuary for not one—but three Indian nations. How its sapphire splendor earned it the nom de guerre, “Lake of the Sky.”
Never mind that it’s the second largest alpine lake on earth. Only Peru’s Lake Titicaca is situated at a higher elevation and bigger. Or that it’s the third deepest lake in North America, and the eighth deepest in the world. Who gives a fig that Mark Twain, upon seeing its brilliance for the first time described it as: “A noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the seas, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft a full three thousand feet higher still!” Twain, who loved traveling almost as much as he loved cheap tobacco, later wrote of his first glimpse of Eden, “As it lay there with the shadows of mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole world affords.”
Mountains? Snowcaps? Mile high waters? Pfft. Nature is so Discovery Channel. Unless you live in California or Nevada (the two states that Lake Tahoe bisects) you probably know almost nothing about it. For many, the question is neatly summed up by taking bonehead to the second power: Lake + Truck Name = Middle of Nowhere.
But-oh-how-wrong-they-are. Did you know, for example, that the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather II” takes place on Lake Tahoe’s west shore? Or that Frank Sinatra opened a swinging resort casino—not in Vegas—but on the lake’s north end? Or that Squaw Valley, one of the Tahoe’s 15 premiere ski resorts, hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics? Who was its Director of Pageantry? Walt Disney. Or that Marilyn Monroe kept a cabin in the northeast woods? (President Kennedy was rumored to visit.) Or that the famous Ponderosa, home of Ben Cartwright on the long-running TV western “Bonanza,” was rooted on the lake’s Nevada coast? Beaches in Nevada? Did you know about those? Read more
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