Lake Tahoe, my future home?

Ok, so I probably will never live at Lake Tahoe, but I can dream, can't I?

I had a pretty busy weekend, for my last weekend in Sacramento! One of my old college roommates and good friends, Katherine, came up to visit since I probably won't make it out to CA again soon. (She lives and goes to school in L.A.). We went up to Lake Tahoe for the day on Saturday and hung out in Old Sacramento today. My parents told me that Tahoe was a place I should definitely visit while I am on this side of the country and only a few hours away. 3 girls that are in AmeriCorps with me have been training for the Lake Tahoe Marathon for the last few months, so some of us decided to go up this weekend and support them while they accomplished this insane task. A few car loads of people actually went up, along with us, but 2 of my friends rode up with Katherine and I on Saturday.

We set off on our hour and a half trek at the early hour of 7:30 and were greeted with fresh snow on the top of the mountain when we got close to Lake Tahoe. It was pretty exciting, i'm not gonna lie. Maybe not for Katherine who wore flip flops, but that was entertaining all on its own! After pulling off at a rest stop to play in the snow for a few minutes, we headed into Tahoe City to find out how we could get to different mile markers to cheer on our friends. It turns out that the hwy going around the western side of the lake, and the actual marathon route was open going south bound, which was the direction the runners were going. So we could travel along side the runners and stop along side the road to cheer people on. So we drove till we found our friends (they had been running at this point for an hour and a half) and we stopped a little ways ahead of them and cheered for people till they passed. Then we drove up about 5 miles and waited again, and did that pretty much every 5 miles, or stopped every time there was photo opportunity. As the morning went on, 2 other cars of Americorps people joined us so our cheering crowd was pretty big. We made friends with other runners and cheered them on every time they passed us as well. All 3 finished in under 6 hours, and they are doing pretty good today.

Along with cheering for our friends who were running the marathon, we were able to enjoy the amazing scenery of the lake. I was just in complete awe of the beauty that was around me all day long. There was a point where we climbed some rocks to sit out and overlook the lake and mountains. It was breath taking. Sitting on these rocks i decided that I wanted to live out here some day. Of all the places I have visited this year, this is where I want to move. Sure, it won't happen, especially on my teacher salary, but i can dream about waking up every morning and seeing that on a daily basis! =)

This is my last week in the program. We have a few meetings/wrap-up stuff each day. Thursday is graduation in the evening and we leave Friday morning! It's kinda crazy to think that I will be done soon, while I am excited about that, I am not looking forward to saying goodbye to a lot of people. This will be an exciting, but tough week when friday morning comes and we all head off in different directions and begin our lives after AmeriCorps.