So I recently re-upped my commitment here at Ratna Ling / Dharma Publishing for another six months of volunteer work, and took a little vacation to celebrate! The eminently photogenic Kate has a friend named Alex who has a lovely spot out in Lake Tahoe. We had a (tragically cancelled) AirBnB that turned into a semi-seedy motel stay in Sacramento, hiked around a bunch, popped into Reno and generally had a great time.

Photos below!

First up, Old Sacramento. According to local legend and also a brochure that we found, there is a whole city built underneath Old Sacramento. I would tell you more about that, but we tried to take the tour and it was sold out. So you'll have to use your imagination like us, sorry.

Not contented with one tourist trap, we moved on the next to Appleville, where they grow all the apples you eat! This isn't true but they had a $hit ton of apples and apple byproducts. Also, pumpkins.

Finally we got to Lake Tahoe, which is stunningly beautiful in a natural splendor way, and a little weird in the Ritzy Ski Resort Town way. It got really cold at night, but it was so gorgeous during the day it really didn't matter.

Shoutout to Alex for letting us crash at her lovely pad for so many days! We also went four wheeling which was pretty fun, and off roading at night which maybe made Kate a little sick. I'm not into skiing enough to live in Lake Tahoe but it was nice to visit - Sacramento, eh. Leave it.

Positive customer service experience - AirBnB was very good to us when our host cancelled last minute - full refund, offered to help us find a new place (we opted for shady hotel) and paid $40 worth of food and drinks while we abused wifi to find a new place! Not the company's fault and appreciated the extra service and responsiveness. So good on them.

That's probably the last trip until I head home for the holidays. I haven't been able to write much because I've been really busy with the 60 hours working and we just started a gang of new classes in the evenings. I usually have about 1 hour of free time a night and that's typically spent staring at the wall until falling asleep at 9:30pm.

It is still wonderful and mostly sunny here! The rainy season did start, and things are green again which is really nice to see. The rain is kind of hilariously soaking when it does come though, sideways rain, upside down rain, etc.

 

Till next time! Adios.