Picking up where I left off yesterday.

Natalie and I spent our Friday night at a local brew pub, trying to escape the curse of the overpriced casino restaurants. Because Lake Tahoe is a resort area, everything seems to be ridiculously overpriced (including gasoline, even though that just appears to be a California/Nevada thing). At some point in the evening, we discovered that the state line literally runs right next to the hotel where we’re staying – the street alongside is Stateline Blvd, and it helpfully demarcates the California/Nevada state line. On this side is Stateline, Nevada – on that side, South Lake Tahoe, California, both at an elevation of 6,285 feet above sea level.

The Tahoe Brewery and Restaurant was kind of a neat place, and more to the point we discovered that civilization does not, in fact, end at the casino block where we’re staying as it appears to on the drive down from Reno. There are a number of neat little places down the street on the California side — true to the California nature, many of them advertise sushi as a local specialty. There are certain things I don’t come to mountain resorts to eat, and sushi is one of them (although truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of sushi overall).l

Today (Saturday) after a morning session featuring a very nice but very very gay speaker and a nun who wouldn’t shut up (these are the sorts of weird juxtapositions that occur in teacher conferences: the bitchy gay man from the textbook company trying to deal with the hyperactive nun from a Catholic school), Natalie and I drove back over to the California side to Emerald Bay, which claims to be the most photographed spot in the world. I have no idea how they could possibly have arrived at that figure, since I don’t know how you’d track it (and, speaking frankly, I don’t recall seeing photographs of Emerald Bay before). But it was a nice drive – us and the Californians driving down from Sacramento to spend a brisk autumn afternoon along the lake.

I have a soft spot for coniferous forests – I think they’re neat. This is probably because I grew up in Ohio, where we had neither mountains nor coniferous forest.

This is Emerald Bay, leading into Lake Tahoe at the narrow straight above. As I said, they (whoever “they” turn out to be) claim this is the most photographed spot in the world. I question that.

They have neat rocks up here, too.

Get me some sheep and it’s like Brokeback Mountain…

After our trip out to Emerald Bay, we headed back into Stateline to get ready for our afternoon session at the conference. Natalie had noticed that attendance seemed to be down today, and swore that we’d have only three people attending our session. She was wrong; we had 8, which wasn’t dismal, but I still found it disappointing. We have good stuff to offer, but I think that we didn’t advertise the session terribly well. Had we known we could have put a specific session breakdown in the program, we probably would have gotten a lot more people. The eight who showed up seemed duly impressed. I have high hopes for our sessions in Fort Worth next weekend.

As soon as the session was over, we dropped our stuff and got back in the truck to head over the mountain to the town of Genoa, Nevada, which claims to have been the first settlement in the state back in 1851. I can neither confirm nor deny this as I don’t know the first thing about Nevada history. Our destination was the Tahoe Ridge winery, which advertises in all of the Lake Tahoe area fliers. Natalie and I have an appreciation for good wine, so we were curious to see what Nevada wineries have to offer. After all, no one has ever heard of Texas wine, and there is actually some pretty damned good Texas wine out there if you know where to look — and it’s a nice way to spend a fall day, driving out into the Hill Country west of Austin and touring the various wineries. Ray usually ends up driving on those trips, since he doesn’t care for wine, and Natalie and I get a little toasty on occasion.

Genoa, Nevada, is a cute little town that some might call “quaint” or “rustic.” It’s barely large enough to warrant a stop sign, let alone asking drivers along the highway (which I only know as Nevada Highway “To US 395″) to slow down to 35 miles per hour as they pass through:

The owners of the winery were a fun bunch – it was like a party atmosphere with lots of laughter and funny stories being swapped back and forth, and we spent quite a while there. We’d been in a little bit of a hurry because it claimed to close at 5, but we were there until 5:30, and the front door was still wide open for business.

We got out of there with 6 bottles of wine in tow (they’re coming FedEx, thus solving the problem of how we’re supposed to get them back to Austin). We’ve already figured out which ones will go with Thanksgiving dinner: Ray and I usually have friends over to share the meal at our house; Natalie is on our standing invite list, and her sister will be in town as well. Plus, this takes care of the wine selection – usually we have to head out toward Johnson City to see what Texas Hills Vinyard has on offer this season. It’s been a couple of years since their awesome Syrah has been for sale, and Tahoe Ridge has something that will fit the bill (and it goes well with dark chocolate. Now all we need is dark chocolate).

Back to Tahoe we came, and I spent part of the evening teaching Natalie how to play video poker. She did all right for a beginner, only losing $2 (I always play the 5 cent machines). I actually recouped my $2 investment, meaning that my overall loss for this trip is only $3.

We had dinner at Cabo Wabo, the Tahoe branch of a restaurant that Sammy Hagar apparently founded in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The food was reasonably priced (particularly for a restaurant in a casino), but I must admit that I was a bit disappointed: the photos on the casino Web site promised hunky shirtless bartenders, and there were no hunky shirtless bartenders on offer. I shall, of course, be filing a grievance with Mr. Hagar himself about this.

In the morning we have time to sleep in, but then it’s back off toward Reno to catch our flight home. I get to spend all of two and a half days in the office before heading off to the next conference – it’s a busy time of year for me. I’m glad we decided to come out here, though – the conference was actually rather well put together and exciting — exciting enough to make us want to put in to present at next year’s gathering in Oklahoma City, and that should say something (no offense to anyone who lives in Oklahoma City).

And so, it’s Saturday night and my eyes are tired, and so I shall sign off here with the promise of another long day of travel ahead of me, and hope that I don’t accidentally forget to put my toothpaste in my carry on where it doesn’t belong…