Karl and I went camping this past weekend at Lake Tahoe. We stayed at Emerald Bay State Park which is on a really pretty bay of Lake Tahoe. It took us about 4 hours to drive there Friday night after work and we were able to set up the tent in the dark no problem. Our site was pretty cool because we didn't have anyone to our left and the campers to our right were up a little hill. The weather was great- upper 80s during the day and mid 40s at night.
View of Emerald Bay from our hike
We planned a hike on Saturday that was about 6-7 miles around Emerald Bay. We had great views of the bay/lake as we hiked and it went all along the water. We passed through Emerald Bay Beach which is really nice and lots of boats were beached there and people were swimming, etc. The water was cold- we think upper 50s but we got in! We got hot enough laying out on the beach and eating lunch that the water actually felt refreshing to get in!
The water is perfectly clear and they have these great sandy beaches you can just walk right into the water from. After our hike we drove to another beach a little more south and it was a happening place We saw some wakeboarders in shortie wetsuits and some kids being pulled on tubes. They had a swimming area buoyed off for swimmers and kayakers. We were overall very impressed with how nice Lake Tahoe was and how pretty the scenery is. We weren't too afraid to cook dinner that night and stored our trash in the bear locker. It's pretty cool to us that you can pick up and camp in the middle of the summer out here compared to Texas where we have about a 4 week window of decent weather. In only 3-4 hours you can be in complete wilderness away from the city. Lake Tahoe is gorgeous and the perfect year round vacation home spot since you can ski all winter at any of the ski resorts there and you have the lake during the summer ;)
