Day 84: Upper Truckee - Echo Summit (mi 1080-1091)

A cabin inholding in the Upper Truckee River basin - talk about prime location!

Smiles packs her bag in our campsite above the meadow.

Our first clear view of Lake Tahoe!

Smiles looking good with Tahoe in the background.

Today was a beautiful day - we had a great start and great breakfast, all the while looking forward to getting into town & hashing out details for Dan's house. A couple hours into the hike, we stopped while I fished Showers Lake for an hour and a half. I hooked four great brook trout - easily the best fishing I'd experienced since leaving Mammoth. It was a relatively easy hike through towering, familiar fir forests for most of the day, with minimal climbing and one long descent around the bluff south of Echo Summit. We had our first on-trail glimpse of the majestic lake in the sky - Tahoe. Such a beauty! As we worked our way down towards the summit, I picked up some service and checked my email, and saw that Dan had sent instructions and was totally OK with us using his house. 

We arrived at Highway 50 and before we could even attempt a hitch , a truck pulled over and picked us up. A familiar face was sitting shotgun - none other than Atlas, whom we hadn't seen since Wrightwood! He had been hiking with Nurse Betty, and her husband gave both a ride to the (relatively speaking) sprawling mountain metropolis of South Lake Tahoe. We were dropped off at the post office with nothing more than our backpacks and a house to use about ten miles driving away. I called around and tried to rent a car, but the busy summer season left the entire basin depleted of rental vehicles from the major agencies. All other options exhausted, I remembered that U-Haul offered pickup trucks for $19.95 per day (plus mileage) in town, so I gave them a shout. They were out of pickup trucks for the day, but they did indeed have roomy cargo vans. I shuffled down to the affiliate 1.5 miles south, then scooped Smiles and our gear up from the post office. 

The van was perfect for our needs, which were mainly centered around getting to and from Dan's cabin off of Pioneer Trail. The radio seemed to have a mind of its own and turned itself on and off at irregular intervals, but it had some get up go, and the A/C blew cold. We arrived at the cabin swiftly and settled into some Law & Order after showering. King Street told us that some hikers were meeting for a buffet at a casino on the strip, so we half-begrudgingly jumped back in the van to go stuff ourselves full of as many calories as we could.  We thought everyone was going to Harvey's, but the rendezvous turned out to be at the Horizon Casino, the redheaded stepchild of the strip. The company was the best part of the evening  - we dug in with King Street, Bird Dog, Coincidence, Sunshine and others while the pipes leaked in the bathroom and the neon lights flickered eerily above. Afterwards, we U-hauled a few hikers back to the 'Y' in the back of the van, then stocked up on groceries for our hopeful solitude in the cabin. Law & Order was still on, thankfully, and we fell asleep on the wonderfully comfortable couches in the living room while propping our weary feet above our hearts, alone and peaceful.