Scenic hike at Emerald Bay

My first post about our trip to Lake Tahoe only covered the first four days of the week-long trip, and I only now got a chance to post about the remainder of the trip.

We had planned on doing three separate hikes over the last three days of the trip but it suddenly became extremely windy, making it too cold and uncomfortable, even in the sun.  We drove out to the hiking sites and could not last more than a few minutes in the wind before retreating back to the warmth of the car.

The wind finally died down on Saturday and we were able to make our way to Emerald Bay and hike down to Vikingsholm Castle.  Unfortunately it is off season so they did not have any tourist guides or information set up, so we didn't know too much about it, but it was nice to look at.  :)

The castle itself is really more of an old wooden mansion than an actual castle, though it did have some rock-based exteriors.  Due to it being offseason, the castle was all locked up so we could only wander around the grounds.  Cam and Popo took a look into the castle through some boarded up windows, and Cam got spooked out - he was scared and I had to hold him as we left the castle courtyard.

The hiking path to the castle starts near the top of a mountain and runs just over a mile til you get down to the shoreline where the castle is located.  It's a pleasant hike down with a few stop points to take some shots of the scenery.  The hike up is a completely different matter, as you're battling a climb that is much steeper than you realized on the way down, and of course you're tired from the initial hike down.  We had to take a couple rest stops and Cam only lasted about 20 feet before he was sitting in the stroller for the rest of the hike out.  We struggled our way out and then rested some more at the top before heading back to the hotel.

During the cold and windy days, we spent some time just hanging out in the hotel room.  At one point, Sara's mom was messing around with Cam and asked him "Are you Dexter?" to which Cam would respond with "No!  I'm Cameron!!" and that evolved into "Who's Dexter, who's Cameron" with Cam responding correctly, and then Sara's mom threw in a "who's Jim?" and lo and behold Cameron said "dada" out of nowhere.  We were absolutely amazed, and followed up with "who's Sara?" and he said "mama"!!  Holy cow Cam knows our names?!?  That's crazy!  We tried various different ways of asking who we were and he correctly identified us, either calling us "dada/mama" or even "Jim/Sara" - nothing's cuter than hearing your two year old refer to you by name.

I tried asking him our names again recently and it looks like he's forgotten our names.  I'm guessing that Cam picked up on the name association during Sara's mom visit but since she's left he hasn't heard 'Sara' or 'Jim' nearly as often so the association to us is not being reinforced and has probably worn off.  It was pretty cool while it lasted.

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All in all, it was a great time at Lake Tahoe.  It's too bad that we lost two days due to inclement weather.  I wish we had headed out for the hikes in the first half of the week when the weather was nice, but this just means we've got a couple of hikes waiting for us on our next trip to Lake Tahoe.

I've added lots of pictures to the Lake Tahoe album, new stuff starts at picture 71, right after 'Dex got to enjoy the great outdoors'.  Enjoy!

Editor's note: this post was originally written in November but the author has been too busy to complete the editing job til now.

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In a couple years, this pic will be replaced by one of them punching each other

Sara's mom headed home a couple weeks back, basically right after our Lake Tahoe vacation.  We all miss her, and Sara actually cried a little after she dropped her off at the airport.  (Sara will kill me for posting that, so you didn't find out from me)  We ask Cam "where's popo?" and he says "Can-dace!" which is Cam-speak for Canada  :)

Before Popo left, we had spent an afternoon at Golden Gate Park.  We entered the park on the Pacific Ocean side and it was extremely foggy and cold and wet and we were rethinking visiting the park for the day, but we drove inland all of five minutes and it was sunny and warm - a perfect day for a picnic.  Typical crazy San Francisco microclimates.

Popo had made some homemade sushi and Cam loved it.  I'm actually not sure what he liked better: eating the sushi or saying "sooooshi!" - he was so excited every time he said it.

There were tons of squirrels at the park, and they are sooo not afraid of humans.  I overheard a couple call them "vermin" and "wingless pigeons" and I could not understand it - they're cute little critters!  They came right up to us, even climbing right onto the bench where we were sitting and posed all cute-like, asking for food.  We found out why they're such nuisances pretty quick, though - when they didn't get food they were actually bold enough to jump at us to swipe some food!!!  One jumped right at Cam and I pulled him out of the way right in time, or the squirrel would have landed on Cam and who knows what would have happened at that point.  We avoided the squirrels whenever we stopped for a snack the rest of the day and had a nice day at the park.

We also visited Fisherman's Wharf with popo.  I figured Cam would love seeing the Sea Lions, but he wasn't all that interested and looked for other entertainment after only a couple minutes of watching them.

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We took Cam to the dentist for the first time.  He was not at all nervous, but that was probably because the first thing he noticed was the Megabloks table - he didn't see the big scary dentist seats and gleaming sharp tools of the dental trade.  The doctor was very nice and had a very calm demeanor about him, and Cam was still not nervous when we sat down with the dentist to listen to what was going to happen.  Finally it was time to check out Cam's teeth and I had to hold Cam down and of course he cried through the inspection and toothbrushing that the dentist gave him.  He was soothed when he got to pick out a "prize" for finishing his dentist appointment - a little plastic dinosaur.  At home, he fought and cried when I brushed his teeth for the first couple days, but after that he lets me brush with no complaints, though sometimes he does fight me not to avoid brushing, but to brush himself.  It's funny when he tries to brush himself - he just holds the toothbrush in place for a few seconds then says "all done".  :)

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Hallowe'en at Taleo

We ended up not going trick or treating this year.  I had to work that day (yes, I had to work on the Saturday. Boo.) so we ended up not going out trick or treating.  Sara had bought a big bag of candy and was all set to hand out the goodies through the night, but nobody showed up.  I don't mean "nobody" as in one or two kids knocked on our door, I mean "nobody" as in not a single person came trick or treating.  Our neighbourhood has gone from "sleepy and quiet" to "perfect environment for burglars" in my eyes.

Anyways, we didn't have any Hallowe'en activity at our home, but my office threw their annual mini-party for families so Sara dragged Cam and Dex all the way out to my work.  Not much to say about the party itself except that Cam had fun walking around and helping himself to the candy bowls lying around the office.

The big notable event was that Sara got rear-ended on the way to the office.  Sara and both boys were all frazzled and crying, but thankfully it was an extremely low speed collision in stop'n'go traffic and nobody was hurt.  The other driver was very sorry and placed a thoughtful follow up call to Sara to see how she was doing, and his insurance company (Allstate) was great about taking care of everything.  They even made sure we replaced the kids' car seats, something we didn't think about doing.

I'm quite happy to have replaced the infant seat as the one we had was a hand me down as getting a bit long in the tooth, but I have a hard time letting Cam's car seat go.  The collision was extremely light and I can't imagine that any of the seat's cushioning has been compromised by the accident.  It's better to be safe than sorry, of course, but I can't bring myself to throw what is a perfectly good seat away so it's currently sitting in our vestibule while I figure out what to do with it.  We'll probably stick it in the Lexus as an occasional use seat for when Dex gets bigger.

That's it for now, enjoy the few pictures I've posted.