Lake Tahoe Adventure with Sisters on the Fly

Greetings!

Gourmet Girl Gail here. I’ve written before about some of my adventures with Sisters on the Fly, and the Tahoe event is one I’ll never forget. There were about ninety Sisters camping out at Tahoe Valley Campground in South Lake Tahoe, and Kim Matarazzo, our hostess and organizer, had some fun activities in store . . . from potluck the first night to the MS Dixie II Sunset Dinner Cruise to Casino night and a Sisters barbecue at Nevada Beach under the spectacular Pavilion.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. The drive up was long (we took 395 along the Eastern Sierras) with a stopover at Diaz Lake, a primitive campground three miles south of Lone Pine. I caravanned with two other Sisters on the Fly: Kathy Moran and Kathleen Murphy. Here we are parked at the lake for the night.

Morning at the lake was magical!

This was the longest haul I’d made with my Roadtrek, and things were going smoothly until we hit a rain cloud just outside of Carson City and my windshield wipers decided to conk out. We pulled over and waited for the cloud burst to empty and then hit the road again.

After getting checked in to our respective campsites, I took a stroll to look at the always amazing vintage trailers that these gals pull to various events. They are ever so inventive!

Bicycling is a big sport among the Sisters. Each morning I saw several women don their backpacks and headgear to head off on a cycling trip. I’m definitely putting a bicycle on my list of things to get for the next Sisters event.

But some Sisters (like me) prefer to keep the home fires burning! Here’s Joanne Tarkington making Dutch oven fireball pumpkin pie. A woman after my own heart. I may ask her to give us the recipe, if she’s willing, for our next Gourmet Girls Go Camping cookbook. It was baked to perfection!

A special shout-out goes to Janice Schoonhoven-Rinehart who single handedly cooked the best pulled pork I’ve ever tasted. We’re talking 80 pounds of pork butt that she pulled out of her freezer on her ranch to feed us all for dinner and enough leftovers for omelettes the next morning. I have to say, I really can’t compete with that! And her sweet dog alerted Janice at 4 am to a bear in her campsite, trying to pry open her Yeti cooler! He wasn’t successful, but . . .  I’m putting that on my list too. No, not the bear or the cooler (I’ve already got a Yeti), but the dog, yes! Speaking of bears, I awoke at 2 am in my campsite to the smell of one and it knocked into my Roadtrek (didn’t enter, thankfully), but the next morning my camp chair had a big ‘ole paw print on it.

My favorite part of Tahoe was swimming in the pristine waters of the lake. Apparently, Tahoe is so clear that in some places objects can be seen to depths of over 70 feet. There are 63 streams that flow into Lake Tahoe and only one, the Truckee River, that flows out into Pyramid Lake. Unlike most bodies of water in North America, Tahoe’s water never reaches the ocean. I grew up camping and picnicking at lakes on the east coast, so being in a lake environment was truly a treat! I look forward to visiting Tahoe again.

In the meantime, do you have a lake story you’d like to share? If so, we’d love to hear about it! Go here to post a comment.

Until next time,

Happy trails to you!

Gail, Denise, and Lindsey

#gourmetgirlsonfire