Old town

Tree house stay wasn’t as nice as we expected. They forgot to bring our breakfast. There was no beach to enjoy the water and the waves were too strong. We cancelled the kayak reservation and quickly left. The only good thing there was the room. 

Luckily the next hotel in old town could take us early. Compared to the tree house, the host was nicer and the price was one tenth. They prepared nice towel swans. 

Because we thought we got a free upgrade to the river view room, I was excited even it had less privacy being on the ground floor. 

Nice to see the river in the city but there are too many mosquitoes. 

We went out to get some food. The right side behind the red building is our hotel. 

Going through the shopping area. It is somewhat cooler by the river. 

Big trees were everywhere. 

Probably this was the highlight of the day. We had some appetizers and drinks. This is the view from the restaurant. Nice breeze. 

Iguana was moving quickly. 

The food was delicious! Rib eye nachos were so good! Just remembering how terrible today’s breakfast was compare to these. 

The iguana was on the top of the box plants eating something. 

This is the restaurant. I highly recommend 

Later I just soaked my feet in the river. 

I wasn’t realized that we could have gotten a better room. All the pictures on the website look much nicer and bigger than our room. I was just too excited to be away from the grumpy host lady from the tree house and welcomed by the nice host guy at this hotel. Unfortunately we can’t even sleep because there are too many mosquitoes. I got about ten bites and used up all my bug repellent. We are requesting to change the room tomorrow. Hopefully he can move us. 

I wanted to do one more water activity before we leave so I reserved the hidden beach tour last minute. Two years ago when we came to PV, we had to give it up because my back was out. We have to get up super early tomorrow. Hope tomorrow is our lucky day. 

Tree House

It was an awesome stay at Costa Sur Resort. We headed to old town by the local bus and went to see my chiropractor. He is the only one whom I can trust adjusting wise. We arrived half an hour early but he was happy to take me. We bought two hammocks from the same place where we purchased last time. Everything went smoothly as planed. The second time makes the trip much more efficient. The plan was to arrive at this tree hotel early in order to maximize our one night stay.

We got here way early but the room was ready. Yay! 

I think this couple stays above us. They splashed water on us in the pool later 

Room is very nice! Staying in the tree house was on my bucket list. It is kind of cheating because it is on the concrete 

Just taking bunch of selfies in the room. Bear with me. 

When we were getting ready for snorkeling, their safety box closed on me  It shouldn’t lock unless I put passcode right? It’s the old type that you turn the knob, not automatically close. I called the front desk and waited for the help. It took so long that we started bathing in the tiny pool where we got water splashed from upstairs. It has a drain socket outwards so it shouldn’t spill the water unless they jump into the water or intentionally spilling it. Assholes  It took about half an hour for the host lady to show up. Luckily she opened it but she was somewhat irritated that we kept bothering her. She had to fix wifi in our room, too. 

Common area. 

Hmmm it seems difficult to get into the water. 

Tree house view from the dock.

I quickly got out of water. It was dirty and I couldn’t see anything besides waves were strong. 

We went to the public pool but other people were there.  Quickly realized that only great thing here was the room . We decided to have dinner at the room. 

I think our hammock is more comfortable 

The dinner came 6 on the nose  Delicious! Small amount but this should be the right way. We always eat too much 

Different time of the day. Pictures look differently. 

Wow! Another nice thing here! Lighting bugs! I had never seen them before! They light in different colors. How beautiful 

All day in the water

We spent all day at this hotel today, mostly in the water. The breakfast was very good.

The reason why I chose this hotel was because of the ocean surrounded by rocks. Last time we came to PV, waves were too big to swim.

Beautiful rocks on the beach. 

This hotel is right below the street! 

I like Mexican art. 

Waiters call our room, 007 

I see the top part is the sidewalk. Still scary.

Back to the room to get ready to go into the water. 

 

First I used the floating stuff but later I didn’t even need them. Much more freedom without them. As long as I can get the air through the snorkeling gear, I can float! 

Hermit! So cute! I used to have them when I was a kid, but they disappeared next day 

Crabs 

We saw many beautiful tropical fish but I don’t have a waterproof camera. Then I started to be greedy. I remembered somebody was catching sea urchins two years ago in PV. I quickly studied how to catch them by watching YouTube. 

Here you go! 

I felt guilty killing them but I wanted to try the freshest sea urchins which I caught by myself. Wow inside looks like a sea urchin  Since it was small, not much meat in there. Surely it tasted like a sea urchin. No need soy sauce because the seawater was really salty. Maybe that’s why we floated better. My mom made me eat sea urchins saying they were delicacy when I was a kid. I didn’t like them at the first time. I love it now!

I returned a small one to where I picked and caught bigger ones. 

 I further swam to the outside of the rock area and saw so many school of fish! Later I googled, one kind of fish I saw was called yellowtail surgeonfish. They looked more than water if I exaggerate  So many beautiful ones, strip ones, blue ones with elegant tails, namako types, tons of them! I touched fugu like puffed up face one. I went back to the area many times and saw so many sea urchins, too. I was no longer guilty eating them  I was having so much fun and it was hard to leave there. 

We moved to the swimming pool. The seawater was irritating our eyes. Look Kenny got so drunk! We realized it was already 6pm. Kenny kept drinking for 6 hours 

This is the scary road on the top I was talking about yesterday. 

Still drinking 

Tomorrow will be sunny. 

We ordered a seafood plate that the waiter recommended. It was delicious! I told him to leave the crab brain twice but they still forgot to do so  This county wastes sea urchins and crab brains which are my favorite. 

Ken looks so drunk. 

It will be very hard to sleep with his world loudest snoring tonight. 

Came back to PV

I booked this trip while our area was smoky. I wanted to get away from unhealthy air. A week ago the world lost the guitar god, Eddie Van Halen. He was my number one guitar hero. I haven’t practiced guitar for a long time, but I played some VH on that day.  Normally VH songs are blocked for slow downer software so their songs skips intermittently. Only on October 6th, the songs didn’t skip  I tried to play again the day before yesterday and they skipped as usual. Did anybody have a control on it or is it miracle by Eddie? 

Much less crowds in the airport, but the airline was pretty full regardless of Covid19. We wore clear face covers on the top of our masks. I was horrified to use the toilet. Such a small sealed space, which is the worst condition for COVID but I ended up with using three times! Inside the plane was so cold! Covid19 makes travels very hard that we have to bring extra things and pay attention for safety. 70% of my suitcase is extra stuff which I didn’t have to carry if there was no pandemic. Anyway I am so glad that we are here  The hotel is very nice for the price! The ocean view is awesome! This pic is from the balcony of our room looking down. The ocean is literally an inch away from this building  

Roomy! Because it is our second time to PV, we reserved the hotel, which is away from downtown area. 

Dinner time at the hotel. Mexican peso’s are confusing. I always make mistakes on calculating into US dollars. 

Simple garlic white wine pasta that tastes exactly I expected. Love it! 

After the dinner, we swam in one of their pools. It was all ours! The pool is located underneath the main road. It looks scary. I didn’t bring my phone to the pool so no pic but I will take the pic tomorrow. We will be here all day hoping to swim in the ocean. When the price is good, everything is satisfying. This hotel is not luxurious but we are having a great time. Ken was drunk and kept talking to me annoyingly while I was writing this. I ignored him then he went to sleep  Night night. 

Eddie Van Halen

It’s 2AM. I can’t sleep. Weird day. So sad.

Patholes

On the way back home, we stopped by Patholes which used to be known by only locals. Beautiful Silver Lake. Too bad there was the red line but I like this angle the best. 

About half an hour walk (stopped for photos too often ) in the beautiful sceneries. 

Arrived! Beautiful granite formations! 

Looking for the best hole to swim. 

That’s the nice spot! 

Luckily the family left and we got the hole with the strong waterfall! 

Here, I was pushed by the current and hurt myself 

Excuse my kappa hair  I just wanted to jump into the water and didn’t care the look. We felt uncomfortable staying here too long since many kids wanted to be in this hole. 

So we quickly left. 

We went as far as we could and bothered this poor dog which was nicely relaxing there 

I hurt my leg by hitting the stone but my back was more serious. Sleeping on the hotel’s mattress was bad enough but I twisted it when I was carried by the current. It’s funny that this bruised wound is bad but my brain was concentrating on my back pain 

I enjoyed here but it was a dangerous place for an eldery lady 

We decided to get going. 

Termite damages. 

Ken said “this is a dinosaur’s shit!”. 

Nature is beautiful. 

River vs Lake

We came back to Nevada side of Tahoe area two days ago to look for a place to live. We were seriously thinking about moving here because we were so tired of all things happening in California: large numbers of COVID19 and fires plus high cost of living. The evacuation order was given close to our house so we packed for emergency. Air quality had been unhealthy for more than a week. So had Reno but it cleared out when we got here. After looking at some houses, we checked out the city. We knew only casino areas where we played gigs. This time we found out the different face of the city.

These pics are from yesterday.

Wow kids were playing on the rafting boats! 

We didn’t know Reno had this beautiful Truckee river 

And the outdoor stage by the river  How nice!

Then we walked to find a place for dinner. 

View from our table at Campo restaurant. 

Ducks were on the rocks 

Today! We started from Black Bear Diner! Our first time.

This restaurant is so cute! Everything is bear 

Good price! These kinds of American restaurants are disappearing. Hope they stay in business. 

Then we came back to my favorite place of Lake Tahoe. We parked close to where we parked last time and descended toward the beach. 

It was little tricky to get there but it was worth the try. We were away from crowds. 

A lot of fish! 

This is our today’s private cove! 

I bought snorkeling gears. My nose looks big 

Big stones and tiny fish were in the water. Not too excited compared to swimming with turtles but still nice 

Bye bye our private cove for now. I wanna come back again!!!

This side was crowded. It is called Secret Cove. 

Some naked guys were there. Look on the rock 

Unsecret cove 

Secluded Cove

This morning was a mess! The hotel’s toilet got over flooded  It happened right before we checked out. Old system can’t take many toilet papers. We managed to wipe the floor with towels. Hope they don’t keep our deposit for this. It was our first time staying in Hard Rock Hotel but I believe it happened to be the worst Hard Rock hotel! One of the curtains were missing so it was bright in the morning. The mildewy smell came from the bathroom door on which probably a past guest pissed on. There was a stain  On the top of pandemic which offered no service, no refrigerator nor coffe maker, the elevator took only four people. We gave up on waiting and used stairs from eleventh floor to move all our belongings. Anyway enough about complaining. There is a website for it 

We decided to go to Chimney Beach today. I wanted to see a beautiful beach with many stones rather than sands. However prime time of Friday, the parking was all full so was Sand Harbor beach’s. We parked on the street near Chimney Beach and descended to the beach from there. Then we realized we came way beyond Chimney Beach 

It turned out to be better! We found our private cove 

Nice area to sit down and change.

There were stone steps into the water perfectly placed!

Ken didn’t want to go into the water so I swam away 

Christal clear water! So much luxury to have emerald green water this much in the lake! If it was a hot spring, I would be here all day  My skin got smooth after swimming. 

Long legs 

There was another family next to this tooth like rock. They were jumping into the water from there. 

 

Then I started seeing fish and snake like things. I doubt that there were snakes but they do live in the water. 

Then swimming dog 

Great experience!!!

Haha! Congested Chimney Beach 

Going back up wasn’t hard at all after all the hikings we did during shelter in place. 

On the way back, we stopped this shopping center. 

Brewery didn’t look like restaurant. We ordered pizza. 

Their sign looks like a ski rental place 

Always wanted to stop by the river. Since I was driving, I pulled over here. 

Huge rocks! 

Sand Harbor Beach

Today we went out in the afternoon. We drove the main street all the way to find a nice brunch restaurant which was not crowded and felt safe. 

We chose this wine tasting place for the view. Ordering wine was their requirement for dining here. We got to use this balcony by ourselves. Totally worth it! 

I think pizza is safe because it is oven heated. 

The food was small. Round two 

Piano theme. 

So hard to find a restaurant with a view in Lake Tahoe. 

After we got sober , we headed to sand harbor beach. Nevada side has fewer businesses and more nature. So many cars were parked on the street and it confused me that the sand harbor beach was this. 

Quickly figured out. This is Chimney Beach. I heard sand harbor beach has the clearest water, so we kept going. 

It costed us $10 to park. We got the closest nice spot! 

Clear water! It is almost as clear as Bahamas! Water is not sea water so it didn’t taste salty. It is supposed to be more pure than tap water. I didn’t intentionally drink it, but it tasted good! 

Water was cold first but quickly we adapted it.

Bear & turtle. 

Crab! 

Nessy 

Kappa 

Back to hotel. This is the best of all doors!

Walking around. More shops since we came here last time. We did Duck ride around here in the past. It is a vehicle but it becomes a boat when it goes into the water. 

Dinner at Thai restaurant. We are trying to eat extremely hot food temperature wise to be safe. Everything else to go. 

Tahoe

I am no longer with the company after 18 years of working!!! The potential new owner backed off the purchase of the business due to the second wave of COVID19. Lots of decisions whether I should find a job at the same industry, different, or relocating. At least we could lower our ridiculously expensive health insurance. I needed a short break and came to Lake Tahoe yesterday! We occasionally come here because of Ken’s gigs but it is so nice to be here without a job! On the way, we found one of the cutest shops I have ever seen!

I always wanted a wooden bear statue. The store is going out of business and we had a discount. I got a small bear which holds the sign saying “Go Away”  and a hummingbird feeder house which says “ Tahoe”. It is a gift for our hammingbird which comes to our backyard everyday 

Let’s see which one is a dog 

It is our first time staying Hard Rock hotel! Lots of Elvis!

This looks like our outfit 

Paul Gilbert’s! Why no face on the picture 

The view from our room. Since we are unemployed, we chose a cheap room over a lake view room  We see Harrah’s hotel where Ken had New Year’s Eve gigs every year. 

Traveling during pandemic is difficult. I spent a couple of hours wiping and cleaning the room and changed the sheets and towels to the ones we brought from home. They got rid of a refrigerator and a coffee maker. The tiny bathroom stinks with mildewy smell  There were no cups in the room so we had to buy souvenir cups. 

Alice Cooper room. When we came into the room, hard rock music was on from TV. It was nice! 

I wish we were in Eddie’s room 

Freddy 

Karate Elvis 

1969 Woodstock!

No surfing Elvis 

BB

I woke up with a headache. Maybe it was from garlic breads last night. I feel better with excedrin. Today we are planning to go to the beach hoping to swim in the cristal clear water. That we couldn’t have done when we came here with a gig