tahoe and donner pass

We had to head to Lake Tahoe while here in CA of course. We had heard how pretty it is, etc. And yep - we heard right. A lot of the shoreline is built up, small villages, homes, etc. However there are a few sections that are still undeveloped tho - yay! These are just a few photos of the beautiful mountain-ringed lake.

We then headed up through Donner Pass. For those of you who may not remember, or do not know: In 1846, a group of pioneers decided to take an unproven trail across the U.S. to California. Due to a number of mishaps and unknown situations, they were unable to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains before snowfall. In order to survive, the people resorted to cannibalism - assumably not killing others, but eating the flesh of those who died from starvation or other natural causes. Relief parties came in from the other side of the mountains when possible to lead the survivors to safety, but they couldn't bring in much food or take all the people at once. It took two months and four relief parties to rescue the entire remaining party. Almost half of the original group died en route.

I've always been intrigued by the pioneers, those who headed west, walking for thousands of miles, looking for a better life. And this particular incident really impacted me - how sad, tragic. Can you imagine going through what they did?! Many of them had gone mad. Newspapers printed articles blaming the travelers of bad conduct. wtf?!

Anyway, since we were so close to the area, we drove up the pass...

and looked over the lake where they lived and died so many years ago.