Truckee California

There are certain places in the world with names so evocative in the mind's eye that they represent a siren's call to the vagabond, the adventurer, the eternally  curious...Mozambique...Zanzibar...Kathmandu... Truckee California.  Truckee???  My only reason for even being aware of the existence of Truckee prior to this trip was as a result of watching the weather station a lot, where on numerous occasions during the winter, they would announce that the warmest place in the continental US was Key West or someplace like that and the coldest was Truckee, California.  Having lived in Canada for 12 years, I was no stranger to the cold, but there was just something about the name "Truckee" that always evoked images of something tough, isolated, a logging town, rugged, forbidding, dangerous, trucklike in addition to the extreme weather that caught my eye, so when I found out that Truckee was only 30 miles or so from Reno which marked the end of our Highway 50 adventure, how could I resist.  Even Jackie was curious what the fuss was about, so off we went.

Contrary to my expectations, Truckee was the go to town for the Lake Tahoe set, affluent, handsome and hungry.  The children are all blond, well togged, and in abundance, as are old people, wandering aimlessly in and out of high end shops looking for that certain something before settling down to a good meal at an expensive eatery.  There were 37 restaurants, 7 boutiques, 4 jewelry shops, 8 art galleries, and 4 or 5 home decor shops in Truckee, and little else. Hardly the rough and tumble place I had envisioned and that it once was, but still, thanks to its affluent repurposing, this former railroad/mill town remains fairly in tact, much more than a shadow of its former self, and thus a pleasure to be in.

After a strenuous day of window shopping and taking in the town, photographically and otherwise, we were hungry and Jackie had her eye on Moore's Tavern in the old Truckee Hotel, where we had a great late lunch.  There are 37 places to eat in Truckee, but if you want a good burger this is the place.  Jackie had one,  I had a beer and the beet salad, sitting under one of those red umbrellas.  Truckee, one more place I have dreamed of seeing, checked off the list.  

                                                                          Pablo