Enjoying Lake Tahoe…

The next day at Lake Tahoe, the snow had already begun to melt, and I did another walk around but this time took a look at the Pope estate. The pond I showed pictures of last time is on the Pope Estate and these shots are again of the pond and just a bit further inside the property. And in better weather. Although a coat was needed, the warm sun helped to lift the spirit.

The pond could use a good cleaning. This is the garden where the volunteers will be growing veggies for the Pope estate. This is the exact location of the original garden and it took some archeology work to find it. They had to identify roots and the like. Took a few years before they had the resources to do that little job. But now it’s known where the garden went. The small fence is to keep the wild rabbits out. The laundry and storage building. To the left and further on, that small building is the creamery, which has thick sawdust insulated walls. Kept the milk and other items nice and cold for the guests.  The main house, with the kitchen in the building on the left. There is a covered and screened walkway into the main houses pantry that the butler used to serve food. There’s no kitchen inside the main house. Upstairs from the kitchen is the schoolhouse. This building has two rooms and they’ve been restore to become the chauffeur’s room on the left, the tutor’s room on the right. Each outbuilding was made as a double residence, so the servants had their own rooms, but only the butler had a large room, big enough for his own cook stove. Many rooms were tiny. Then there was a washroom with a toilet, sink, and tub in the same building as the butler’s quarters, that only the upper servants could use, most used an outhouse.

The fountain isn’t ready to turn on just yet. The buildings there are the blacksmith shop in the left foreground, and the nanny’s room, and seamstresses room in the building on the right.

So that was my Sunday walkaround. The next day, it was time to appear at the shop and make myself useful, even though the official opening for volunteers wasn’t until Tuesday. It was a very nice day, and the sun soon warmed everything up enough that it was pleasant to work outside on another set of gates that had been built for the bone yard extension a few years before. They were sticking too often and making it difficult to open or close them. Not a very good design, that diagonal piece isn’t really supporting much. But, Steve, the current professional carpenter knew that I’d designed the other gates, and assigned me the job of getting these gates back working right.

Without tearing them down and throwing them away, about the best thing to do with them was to just use a sawzall and shorten a few pieces. That did the trick and when finished, and there was a nice 1/4″ gap between the gates when closed. No more sticking. Steve came out and did most of the sawing since he’s more use to using the sawzall.

We knock off at 4 pm so I was back inside my RV around 5 when this bear sauntered by, I took too long finding & fumbling with my camera so only got one photo…

Hard to see, but it’s right there in the middle of the picture. Brown fur matches the tree to it’s right. Fairly big bear too.

And that’s it for today, next post will be about the crew’s visit to Virginia City. Where Mark Twain worked as a reporter for 4 years or so. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!