Donner...Party of Four

Is there anything better than spending a sunny warm summer day in Truckee with friends? After strolling the main street, petting new puppies and old dogs, admiring the creativity on display in the friendliest bead shop I've ever been in, drooling over a tooled red leather purse that's outside my budget, sampling free trade chocolate and bemoaning the loss of my favorite jewelry/spice store down on the Bar-of-America-end of town, I began wondering why it's been so long since I visited one of my favorite towns. We tend to drive past on our way over The Hill to see family rather than make it a day's outing. So wrong.

When our inner lunch bell finally overcame our predatory shopping instincts, we drove up Donner Pass Road and chose a spot a boulder's roll from the old bridge, unpacked our picnic lunch and sat down to enjoy the view and the warm sunshine. Looking down at Donner Lake brought back so many wonderful memories of family vacations here. The log cabin built for the railroad workers was fabulously close to trout fishing from the dock with our sons.

After lunch, we conducted scientific research with this little fellow.Turns out chipmunks prefer junk food (tortilla chips) to nutritious anti-oxidant fruit (blueberries) and will graciously pose for photo ops. I'm not sure if this was Chip or Dale.