Lake Tahoe, California/Nevada

Heading north through California, we decided to take a few days stop at Lake Tahoe along the border of California and Nevada. We stayed at a campground right on the shore on the Nevada side of the lake. We had incredible views and enjoyed hiking, campfires, and relaxing at the park.

Camping

We camped at the Nevada Beach Campground, a campground on U.S. Forest Service land managed by the California public lands bureau. We originally booked just one night and loved so much upon first sight that we immediately got online and booked for two additional nights. Because the campground is so popular, we had a different site each night so we did the site switch every day right after checkout. The campsites were huge and we had a picnic table, fire ring, and bear box at al of our sites. The campground had restrooms and water spigots throughout the park. There are no showers or dump stations in the campground.

We spent lots of time relaxing at the campsite. We had a few nice campfires during the day. We set up the hammock at every site and switched back and forth hammocking while reading or doing computer work. The cellular service at the campground was pretty good so we both had enough connection to get our work done. We used the picnic table to cook on our outdoor stove for almost all of our meals. It was a great location and we loved the space to relax and enjoy the sunshine.

Hiking

We took several hikes around the Forest Service parcel of land during our stay. The park has paved and gravel trails and we did all of them. The trails ventured through forests, meadows, streams, and along the lakeshore. The paved trails went several miles beyond the campground, one side into town and the other side into neighboring parks. The gravel trails were probably our favorite because the widest variety of landscapes were found along that trail.

Lake Tahoe

It was far too cold to swim in the lake. The high temperatures were only around 60 degrees and the sun wasn't enough to warm up the water. Also, the lake is fed primarily through snow melt and mountain streams, which are very cold. The mountains around the lake were still snow-capped during our stay. We had beautiful views of the mountains at all times of the day. Midday had bright sun and reflections off the water. Sunsets were amazing and Adam got great photography during our evening walks on the shore.

There is one small part of the beach that is dog-friendly. The park has pawprints painted on the sidewalks and roads that you can follow right to the dog-friendly beach. We walked multiple times a day to the beach. Acadia liked splashing around in the super shallow water. She also enjoyed eating sand if that shows anything about how weird our dog is. We had a couple of times when off-leash dogs would run up to Acadia and she would start to growl and bark. Nothing happened but it was frustrating that other dog owners didn't get their dogs to stay away from our clearly uncomfortable puppy. Dog-friendly beaches, in our opinion, only mean off-leash beaches if there are no other dogs there.

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Compared to our last lake visit this was a walk in the park. Weather was much nicer than Lake Mead and we didn't have any concerns about overheating electronics. The water was much clearer and the beaches were full sand, which would have been really nice if we were brave enough to swim. Although we didn't get to swim, we are glad we went to Lake Tahoe when we did. It was before the busy tourist season so the beaches weren't packed and the trails weren't full. The campground was packed, but it didn't feel that way because the sites were so big. Summer is catching up to us and we're running low on being able to say it's still early in the tourism season.