Scerinda's Visit and Camping at Lake Tahoe

Scerinda and her kids came to our house on Wednesday, July 15. They went to visit San Francisco with Uncle Mark on Thursday. Then on Friday we drove up to Lake Tahoe to go camping and shorten Scerinda's Saturday drive home to Salt Lake.

We went camping at Sugar Pine Point State Park on the west shore of Lake Tahoe. We were greeted by a Park Ranger who asked us if we had ever camped there before with a look like "do you know what you are getting into?" We said, "No," and she said, "There are a lot of bears at this campground." They had seen six that morning already! We tried not to panic, smiled, took our parking pass, and drove to our campsite. Mark and EJ were already there and camped one site down from us.

Scerinda shared our campsite, since we had eight people total (Mom stayed home to fill the pool). We had dinner (hot dogs, corn bread, and s'mores). Then it was dark, so we started getting ready for bed. We were loading things in and out of the bear box after cleaning up dinner and getting toothpaste and toothbrushes out for bed time. Dad, Sarah, Alex, and Lily were just kneeling down in the tent to say a prayer when Uncle Mark yelled, "Hey, there's a bear in your bear box! Go away bear!" We all started clapping and yelling "Go away bear!" inside our tent, unaware of what was going on outside. We came out to talk to Mark, who could see everything, once the bear had left. It turns out it was three black bears -- a mom and two cubs. Uncle Mark said the cubs had both climbed in the bear box and the mom was standing on her hind legs next to it. So we were more vigilant about keeping the bear box closed after that.

Our campsite with Scerinda's minivan and our minivan.

 The bear box and the bears were right by our blue tent!

On Saturday we woke up early, but not early enough. We wanted to hike to Vikingsholm mansion on the shore of Emerald Bay. But all the parking spots including the road spaces were already taken by 9:30am! We drove around to the overlook and got some good pictures though. We love Emerald Bay -- it is a slice of heaven.

We decided to swim at Pope Beach instead. We like this beach from the TRT100 trip last year. The water is fairly warm and the sand is fun to play in. Sam made a big sand fort/castle with Alex, Lily, Catherine, and Tommy.

Catherine, Alex, Lily, Sarah (far out in the water), and Sam (left to right)

It was a fun visit with Scerinda, her kids, Uncle Mark, and Aunt EJ. The bear visit was a little more than we were expecting. But we all had fun talking, camping, and playing at the lake.