We headed back to the hotel and got kitted out for a walk with hats boots water bottles and so forth. We then rode the gondolier up to heavenly. It's a pretty spectacular ride if not a very comfortable one locked in a small swaying box with little ventilation which acts like a green house is not very fun. Still the views are worth the discomfort.
On the way up it stops at a lookout post that overlooks the lake with some really spectacular views of Tahoe and the surrounds. We took a bunch of photos hopefully they come close to capturing the superb view.
Then it was off to the top a bit more swaying about we arrived at Heavenly which is the ski hub. We were greeted by screams a common response but in this case it was due to the Heavenly Flyer a massive zip line that runs from the summit down to Heavenly, we wanted a go but it was all booked up for the day.
We had a quick drink in a bar to refresh ourselves (soft drinks only naturally). Then headed out into the hot sunny day to do the East Peak Lookout walk a relatively easy hike. It offered some wonderful views of the surrounding valley out into Nevada the other side of the mountains and then as we got to the peak Lake Tahoe itself.
After enjoying the views and a bit of a rest we made our way back to Heavenly on the way we saw some local wildlife a little squirrel or chipmunk which was happily eating a nut. We kept our distance some of the wildlife has rabies or other nasty stuff but a few telephoto pictures were in order.
We took the gondolier back down to South Lake Tahoe and had a rest. A bit later we headed out for dinner we went to this Sushi bar called Kalani's and had some Sushi and some Sashimi on a mixed plate. Then some more Sushi and a California roll when we were still hungry. We washed it down with some large bottles of Kirin Ichiban and managed a pudding. I had a delicious Chocolate Volcano Cake.
We headed back to the room to plan for the next day. In the course of our planning we discovered a problem at Yosemite, wild fires had cause a road closure on the route we were planning on taking. With some careful rework of our route and dropping our planned trip to the Devils post piles we managed to make an alternate route that dodged the problem area at the cost of an extra couple of hours of travelling time. We set our alarms for extra early so we could manage our few stops and the 300 odd mile trip to Yosemite.
