California Adventures - CA State Fair

July 16th

This morning we're leaving Reno.

But first, we have to see the progress on the murals:

I wish we could have seen all the completed murals, but this was really cool to at least catch part of.

Onto Sacramento and the California State Fair!

Also to see our friends Laura, Jacob, and C.

Dan makes a good asparagus.

OMG!  All the ridiculous fair food!

Deep fried everything!

Dan and I split a giant corn dog.  

It was something stupid like 106 degrees outside.  

We mostly stayed inside and ran from one air conditioned building to the next, but I wanted to see the garden.

I found a golden bear to sit on.  It was very hot.  I'm trying not to touch it.

We found the animals!

Baaaaaaaaaaaa!

Goat grooming stations.

I'm kind of envious of these sheep and their sweaters.

Cozy cattle.

Mini-moo and Moo.

Did you know your animal can win a Market Meat category?

I did not.  I guess I haven't been to that many fairs with livestock.

There was this cool patio area, but it was too hot to be in right now.

Different types of pigeons from the Northern California Pigeon Fanciers.

Chicks!  That one definitely has some attitude.

The Grand Champion Market Eggs and the runner-up, should the Champion eggs not be able to preform their duty.

I wanted to see what the California crafts exhibit had to show.

Entries were kind of all over the place.

A crocheted cactus garden.  

A carved and painted gourd.

Some truly wonderful quilts.

This fantastic beast.  I'm kind of sad it wasn't for sale. 

This beautiful quilt.

Some of the entries were like "I made a hat!"  except it was super un-even and...not good.  Laura and I were super judgey as crafty people ourselves.

Anyway, we had to head out so we could get home at a decent hour.  Bye friends!

****I realized I called this California Adventures, when in fact the majority of it was in Nevada....So....Let's pretend I meant Adventures from California for this weekend.****

This concludes our adventures for today.

California Adventures - Tahoe

July 15th

Today we escaped Reno and went on a hike at Tahoe.  

I can see the lake!

It's a lovely day for a hike.

I think we did the Castle Rock trail, or something over in that area.

Rocks!

The hat was good to have.  It was very sunny and hot.

It is so beautiful here.

We were there!

I love that you can still see the snow on the mountains.

I walked around and around and around this tree and these rocks looking for a geocache.  

I found it!

The rocks go waaaaay up.

Ugh.  It's so beautiful.

We ran into a family that told us if we were willing to do a little rock scramble, we could get above the trees and some more amazing views.

Big trees and big rocks.

We were there!

Panorama of  Lake Tahoe.

Panoramas of the rocks and things away from Lake Tahoe.

Well worth the rock scramble.

One downside to the hike was we didn't have enough water.  By the time we got down and back to the car we were very grumpy from lack of water.  We drove into down and descended upon a pizza place and drank what felt like a gallon of water each.

Thirst slated, we wandered off and discovered a make your own ice-cream sandwich shop called The Baked Bear.  You pick your choice of cookie, ice cream, and toppings.  It was great.

Walking back to the hotel, we saw these amazing murals going up on what, this morning, had been a blank wall.

It's a 24 hour mural marathon hosted by Circus Circus. 

Support crew for the artists.

This one makes me think of Where the Wild Things Are.

Skull flowers?

Cool 3D buccaneer.

RAAWR!

The Circus Circus Clown all lit up.

We had some time to kill this evening and we went to see Ali Wong.  She was great.  She has some Netflix specials, I suggest you check them out.

This concludes our adventures for today.