Vacation 2009, Day Six: Six Lakes in Five Days

That's the friendliest looking, fun-having leech I've ever seen. Except this girl I dated once when I was living in Galveston.

Today's highlight was a hike to Marlette Lake, part of the Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park, on the east side of Lake Tahoe. For anyone counting, that makes six lakes in five days. Like yesterday's hike on the Mt. Rose loop trail, this second Nevada side hike went much better and was much more enjoyable than my initial hike on the California side. In general, I like the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe than the California side. Its less commercialized, less built up, and just generally seems less touristy. The whole area is incredibly beautiful, particularly on the Nevada side. If you remember the Lake Tahoe scenes in The Godfather, Part 2, that's pretty much exactly what it looks like.

Today I slept late, not dragging out of bed until 8. My usual puttering around this morning involved watching a bit of the local "good morning news." It reminded me how shallow and patronizing most local news programs are. "Mobs destroy American embassy in Uzbekistan-how does this affect Reno?" leading to an interview with some guy who'd been to Uzbekistan once, 10 years ago during his semester abroad. Balloon races, Wal Mart openings, car dealer promotions, the fishing report. Fake banter. Pompadours and hair teased to within one millimeter of its life. Except for you Michelle Valles at KEYE in Austin; you almost make it worthwhile to watch the 6 a.m. local news (and when you were behind me once at Whole Foods and laughed at something I said I almost thought you were flirting with me-that's what I call a quality journalist).

It started out a bit cloudy today, and though there's absolutely no connection, it dawned on me that this condo has a really great deck. With a wooden carved bear statue. In another lifetime I might enjoy spending a vacation day sitting out on the deck reading, enjoying the sound of the rushing stream nearby, drinking tea, avoiding people, and enjoying the nice breeze. But in this lifetime I can do that for about 10 minutes before thinking about all the money I'm spending just to go somewhere and do something I could do at home. So its off to the trail again today! Heel blister and all. In my too tight new REI shorts (the next size up was too big, and they didn't seem that tight in the store).

I arrived at the trail at the crack of 11:15, by which time the clouds had cleared and it had warmed up some. This park originally was the site of extensive logging operations to supply wood to the nearby Nevada and California gold and silver mining towns. Unregulated logging virtually denuded the forest, so most of the new forest consists of silver fir, pine, and aspen trees. Apparently the lack of diversity causes problems, including the pine beetle. The object of today's hike was Marlette Lake, an incredibly scenic lake in the heart of the park's backcountry.

The trail started out fairly level at first, but then about 3/4 mile in, started heading up and continued gaining elevation until about 1/2 mile before the lake, at which point it descended steeply until it reached the lake shore. That's about 4 miles of steady, steep incline through thick forest alongside the "North Canyon Road." The aspens were just beginning to turn; in a few weeks the leaves will be gold and will shine in the afternoon sun. Everyone should drive from the Grand Canyon to Flagstaff during October-the aspens along US 180 are phenomenal. Unfortunately, some idiots have carved their names and other words on some of these beautiful trees here. Was that really necessary? Couldn't they have just stayed in whatever city they're from and scrawled on bridges or schools there? There were also a great number of boulders and other large rocks, just like in the other parks around Lake Tahoe. After reaching the lake shore, I rejoined the access road and took it to the overlook on the east side. Unfortunately this meant enduring an incredibly steep hill-my heart rate climbed very high (I wear a heart rate monitor when hiking). But I made the overlook, had lunch there, came back down and made it to a little islet that juts into the lake, and made it back safely 5 1/2 hours and about 11 miles after starting.

The rest of the day and night was pretty mundane. Watched the Steelers-Titans game while packing, and ate incredible meatball leftovers.

OK, the rest of this is political, so you're warned.

As its still technically 9/11 where I am, I want to make a couple of points related to all the people saying "we will never forget." Part of "never forgetting" is never letting it happen again. Remembering all those innocent people that died, and all the families and friends whose lives will never be the same because of unprovoked terrorist mass murder, means absolutely nothing if we stop trying to prevent future attacks. The first point is no matter how much civil liberties obsessives wring their hands, one cannot deny that we've suffered no further attacks (or that we've captured plenty of others who've been planning attacks). Unlike countries like Spain or Indonesia or even the UK, whatever we're doing is working. And we know Al Qaeda and other groups are still trying to concoct schemes to inflict more terror. I've just traveled halfway around this country with extremely little inconvenience despite heightened security measures. I can say what I want, associate with anyone I want, and go wherever I want. Because I remember how nearly 3,000 people died over the course of a few hours eight years ago, I will gladly put up with whatever minor traveling annoyances we must incur to stop from adding more names to that list. The second point is that those who are losing their nerve in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, primarily the mainline Democratic party but some conservative/isolationists as well, are for all practical purposes forgetting those who died on this day in 2001. We were attacked in large part because we allowed that region of the world to fester, to harbor terrorists, and to gain strength because we were not willing to commit armed forces. Sometimes we cannot protect our security at the bargaining table, or with trial lawyers filing lawsuits and indictments. A sizable group in this country, again primarily in the Democrat party, are all for defending our national security for awhile, until they find bridges, welfare, and unneeded subsidies to spend the money on instead (and thereby curry favor with constituent interest blocs). Then the principle of protecting our country against future attacks that they embraced evaporate like water on the August pavement. So many people were quick to whip the Bush Administration's Iraq policy with the contention that it was draining resources away from the "good" war in Afghanistan. The war that Sen. Obama supported. Now that Iraq is largely over and the hated Bush has been consigned to Dallas, the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban have become just an expensive inconvenience for some. These people would prefer to forget that under the Taliban, Afghanistan used drug money to fund terrorists and their training camps, mutilated and systematically beat women and deprived them of basic human freedoms like education, and persecuted and even executed non-Muslims. Those who call for retreat in Afghanistan and ceding it back to the Taliban are the same cowering appeasers who called for retreat in Iraq as an alternative to the surge. Fortunately, our often wavering President has to date resisted these calls and has stuck to his campaign commitment to finish the mission in Afghanistan. The fact that its taking longer or costs more than some would like should come as no surprise. We knew at the outset it would take a long time to root the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of that part of the world. We have an outstanding fighting force capable of performing this task. Stopping the next 9/11 requires that we allow them to finish.

Next-leaving Tahoe, and the road to the Central Valley.