USA Trip , day 2 - 25th January

Next morning we took a walk around Fisherman’s Wharf. San Francisco was enveloped in low cloud (typically), but it was good to see the (California) Sea Lions at Pier 39, performing well. There was not much happening on the birding front, although I didn’t expect to see some Anna’s Hummingbirds buzzing around one of the car parks. There were quite a few Mew Gulls (aka Common Gulls) around the harbour, which weren’t present during my last visit in the summer.

We checked out and started our drive to Lake Tahoe. We took a route via the Golden Gate Bridge (well you have to don’t you) and took a road across the northern part of San Francisco Bay. There were a number of pools and estuarine parts we couldn’t get access to – frustrating as these seemed very birdy. We did manage a stop and a little walkabout a freshwater pool where 100’s of Brewer’s Blackbirds were following a tractor ploughing a field, with 10’s of Ring-billed Gulls. There were plenty of diving ducks there, including Canvasback, Lesser Scaup, Redhead, Ruddy Duck, Bufflehead, Pintail, American Coot, and a small flock of Least Sandpipers and a lone Willet feeding around the edge. A Northern Harrier and a White-tailed Kite were quartering the saltmarsh.

After a quick stop for lunch, we continued our journey. It was pretty mild, with temperatures in the mid 60’s Fahrenheit once we got away from the coastal fog. The drive was pretty easy past Sacramento, then we wound our way through the Sierra mountains and down to Lake Tahoe, and our destination of South Lake Tahoe.

This town has a split personality because it straddles the state-line between California and Nevada. On the California side is a long boulevard with a sprawling mess of budget motels and eateries. I'm sure there is some good quality accommodation among this dross, but you'd have to know what you're looking for. Around the base of a new gondola to the ski areas up the mountain, new developments have added a touch of class to the area. Across the state-line there are a number of casinos modelled on Las Vegas and Reno.

We are staying in one of these, the Mont Bleu Resort, which used to be Caesars (as in Caesars Palace). The rooms are very comfortable here on the 9th floor (another 7 floors above us) with a great view of the mountains behind South Lake Tahoe. The basement is taken over by a huge games hall – slot machines, slot poker games, card and roulette tables. It’s very glitzy, as you would expect and another world to a non-gambler. Also on the ground floor are a swimming pool, spa, fitness centre, 3 bars (with gaming machines on the bar), 7 restaurants, a nightclub, a concert hall and several shops. It’s some place, and very good value.

A welcome letter from Ben, our rep from Ski-I was waiting for us, complete with instructions for picking up our lift pass tomorrow. The local ski slopes have been suffering from a lack of snow - apparently the worst ski conditions for 20 years. Oh dear.

We went out to look for skis to hire, and found that the rental shops further away from the casinos offered very good value for money. We settled on George’s Ski Rental which offered top of the range at $20 per day with a discount voucher I printed out from their web site and a considerable saving on other places we checked out. We ate in one of the Mont Bleu restaurants and crashed out.