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Good day everyone, I know its been a little while since I had a post. I wanted to take a few more pictures of this beautiful place before leaving. We only have a few days left here at Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park (Spooner Lake) and all of its surrounding beauty.  We have been here for 6 months and we are sad its ending, but we do plan on coming back in the summer of 2021. We had a blast working here and had fun with all the rangers and seasonal staff. Will miss this place.  Here are some more pictures of the area.

Jodi and I walked The Marlette Flume Trail and got some beautiful pictures up at 7,500+ ft elevation and about a week later I got up to about 8,700 to the Sand Harbor Overlook.. Beautiful…

Click on a photo to preview..

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Some shots of our snow storm in September.

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Now a few weeks later we have fall foliage..

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Ranger Steve and Myself doing Selfies.. Being Goofy too……

Pictures below were taken by Brian Montes who is a park staff member we worked with.. Great photos. Thank you Brian.

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We also visited a real small town about 15 miles from Spooner Lake called Genoa, NV.  This place, located within the Utah Territory before the Nevada Territory was created in 1861, Genoa was first settled by Mormon pioneers. The settlement originated as a trading post called Mormon Station,  now it’s the Mormon Station State Park. It served as a rest site for travelers on the rugged California Trail. In June 1850, H.S. Beatie and fellow Mormons built a roofless log enclosure and corral as a trading post near a small stream. Emigrants could obtain clothing, tobacco, meat, canned goods, coffee, beans, sugar, flour and bacon. Cattle and a dozen wagons loaded with supplies to establish a permanent trading post. By 1852, emigrant traffic thru the area was heavy and the settlement expanded,  a post office opened, a blacksmith shop was built, and sawmills were built. Here is also the oldest Thirst Parlor Bar Saloon in Nevada established in 1853.  Every year since 1919, Genoa has held a festival called the Candy Dance, where candy, food, and crafts are sold to support its town government. This is how we discovered this small town. It was a huge market of food and crafts..

Some pictures of the Candy Dance, Arts and Crafts plus food..

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Some pictures of the neat small town of Genoa, NV

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We are moving on to our Winter hosting place in Yuma, AZ. We are going to hit some places on our way to Castle Dome Ghost town and mine Museum. Just 40 miles North East of Yuma, AZ.  We are going to help with mine tours, upkeep the ghost town, work in the gift shop and at times participate in some old western re-enactments of the 1860s. We are looking forward to having much fun with all of that during this coming Winter; November to March.  Then we head to our next Summer host job in Washington State near Mount Rainier, starting May till October 2020.

While heading to Castle Dome we will be stopping at 4 locations. We have been to two of those stops before, but we are going to Death Valley, where it is normally the hottest place in the U.S.. and it also has the lowest elevation in the U.S.. -278 below sea level… Then to Nellis AFB just outside Las Vegas.. Visit Family while there and check on our Winter hosting job for 2020 at Desert National Wildlife Refuge just outside of Las Vegas. Then we head to Havasu State Park, AZ.. That’s a nice park and the London Bridge is right there too….   We have been to Havasu, but on the California side, the state park is on the AZ side… Fun fun…

I posted this on our last post about Castle Dome Ghost Town and Mine Museum. It’s a link to the site of Castle Dome…… Check it out and if you are ever out in the area of Yuma, AZ, you need to check this place out… click on site ———-> http://www.castledomemuseum.org

Stay tuned, will post some pictures of our trip South and will keep you up to date on our new adventures…

The Bobble Head Travelers,   Mark and Jodi… P. S. Happy Halloween…..

Yes we are back at Spooner Lake, Lake Tahoe Nevada State Parks area….  We prematurely left our last hosting job due to it not working out for us. It did not meet our expectations. The host that was supposed to take over our position at Spooner Lake backed out and left it open for Jodi and I to return for the rest of the summer.. Things do work out for a reason. It was meant to be for us to be back at Lake Tahoe area.. We will be hosting in the area for another two and a half months, till the end of October.  So much fun being here……

We stopped in Sacramento, CA for a few days before getting to Knight’s Ferry and checked out the train station where part of old Sacramento is located and where the Transcontinental Railroad started. The first Transcontinental Railroad” was joined on May 10, 1869, with the ceremonial driving of the “Last Spike” at Promontory Summit, Utah, after track was laid over a 1,756 mile gap between Sacramento and Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa in six years by the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad. We took some pictures.

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Part of the Old Sacramento when it was in the 1800’s… Saloons, Hardware and other stores owned by part of the Big 4 that made the Railroads possible. Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker–had to wait a few years for the pay-off on their seed money for Central Pacific. When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the four investors laughed all the way to the bank. Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a hardware store shown below….

The Recreation area that we were at was very beautiful and had lots of history. Below I posted some pictures of the park and its surrounding beauty.  This is the Stanislaus river that travels through the park and makes rapids rafting a big attraction in that area. The park has the longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi.. It was built in 1863 and is 330 feet in length. We went through this covered bridge every day to get to work.

Knights Ferry Recreation Area

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Back at SPOONER LAKE

We really did enjoy being up here at Spooner Lake because it’s beautiful here and cooler, and it’s just flat out FUN being hosts here. Great Rangers and Staff at Lake Tahoe Nevada State Parks. If you have a bucket list, this has to be one of them to visit…

We started working again about a week ago here at Spooner Lake and Lake Tahoe area, the many hiking trails all over the Tahoe area that we help take care of and manage. They call it the Back Country. We have a few primitive campgrounds that we take care of and two lakes that we help manage. This place is so beautiful.  We had a chance to check out some more of this back country that Spooner Lake has to offer.  I recently took some more pictures of this beautiful place. The pictures posted here are some of Marlette Lake with Lake Tahoe behind it… These photos I took were at  8,850 feet  elevation. We felt like we were on top of the world..

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Here are a few more pictures of part of the Back Country looking north and South part of Lake Tahoe, called the Monkey Rock..

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This is the Monkey Rock, Yes it looks just like a Monkey Face…

We are trying to set up our next hosting job for the winter, we pulled out of the one we had set up for Fresno, CA because it did not sound like it was going to be very safe and not too fun for us, so we are now in the process of looking for another winter job somewhere around south Nevada or Arizona. FLASH FLASH… We may have just lined up a hosting job at a place outside of Yuma Arizona. Check it out!!  The place is called Castle Dome Mining Museum.  Click on this link………http://www.castledomemuseum.org . Fingers crossed on getting the position. It sounded promising and sounds like fun. You will see by checking out the site… We are so excited about the possibility taking this on for the winter…. November  to April of 2020…. We are also looking forward to doing our summer in Washington State… Will let you know where when we know… So much fun and adventures awaiting us for the next year……

Stay tuned and find out more info on where we will be spending our Winter…

The Bobble Head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi