For a mile or two we play at hide and seek with the Lake. It seems as though we were in the hands of a wizard. "Now you see it, now you don't." Query: "Where is the Lake?" Mountains, snowbanks, granite walls, trees galore, creeks flashing their white crests dashing down their stony courses toward the Lake, but only now and then do we catch fleeting glimpses of it. All at once it bursts full and clear again upon our enraptured vision, but only to give us a full taste of its supernal beauty before we are whirled around a curve where the eye rests upon nothing but the rugged majesty of the Sierras. Change and contrast, the picturesque, beautiful, delicate and exquisite in close touch and harmonious relationship with the majestic and the sublime. Travel the whole world over and nothing surpassing this can be found.
Now we curve around high up above Emerald Bay, that small glacial Lake, the eastern terminal moraine of which was unfortunately torn through, so that the lake disappeared and became a bay of the great Lake itself. Every moment of this portion of the ride is a delight. The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on every hand come up the sweet scents of growing, living things. Now Mt. Tallac, in all his serene majesty, looms ahead. Snow a hundred or more feet deep in places covers his rocky sides. Here we can see where glaciers were born in the early days when Tallac was several thousand feet higher than it now is.
| Upper Eagle Falls, Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
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Below us is the emerald-ringed bay, with its romantic little island at the west end, and nearby the joyously-shouting Eagle Creek as it plunges over the precipice and makes the foam-flecked Eagle Falls. Our road here was blasted through some fiercely solid and hostile rock. One boulder alone that stood in the way weighed (it was estimated by the engineers) from 800 to 1000 tons. Fifty cases of highly explosive powder were suitably placed all around it. Excursion steamers took hundreds of people from all parts of the Lake to see the explosion, and at the proper moment, while everybody held his breath, the fuses were fired, the blasts took effect, the rock flew down to the level beneath, shattered into four great masses. A new El Capitan now rises above us, though it lacks the smooth unbroken dignity of the great Yosemite cliff, yet it is sublime in its sudden rise and vast height. Nestling at its feet is Eagle Lake, and beyond are the Velmas and a score of other glacial jewels calling for visitors to rhapsodize over their beauty. Maggie's Peaks are to our right, Eagle Falls to our left, with Emerald Bay, the Island, the Point and the Lake beyond all calling upon us to enjoy them to the full.
We decide to stay here for lunch, and under the shelter of a giant sugar pine a thousand years old, listening to the eternally buoyant song of Eagle Falls, we refresh ourselves with the good lunch put up for us at the Tavern.
Again we push ahead and soon have our first adventure: The road gang was at work, and we did not expect to go much farther, but they assured us that, save for a few rough places here and there, which they would speedily correct, we need have no fear but that we could get through with ease. In a score of places, since we left the Tavern, we had crossed little streams of snow-water that had come tumbling down from the banks above. Suddenly we came to one with a larger volume than most of the others, and the road bed a little softer, so it had cut quite a deep little passage for itself. Easily our chauffeur dropped the front wheels into the cut, and to his surprise he found they stuck there. It did not take us long to jack up the wheels and put rocks underneath them, and we were about ready to get out when the road gang came along with a wagon and a pair of sturdy mules. As quickly as it takes me to tell it the mules were attached to our back axle and we were pulled out. A few more rocks and a couple of planks placed over the cut and we were honking on our way with triumph.
| Cascade Lake, Near the Automobile Boulevard, Lake Tahoe
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Half a mile farther we came upon the ridge that separates Emerald Bay from Cascade Lake. Both are in clear View at the same time, while to the west we can hear the joyous song of Cascade Falls in its grand leap down from the foot of the snow-banks of Mt. Tallac into the tree-clad stream-course below.
Now the road brings us almost directly above the Lake, with a rapid slope down, covered with dainty trees and shrubs of recent growth. From here we gain a fine view of the south end of the lakeshore. Tallac, the Grove, Bijou, Al Tahoe and clear across to Lakeside, with the deep green of the meadows above, and the snowy crowns of Freel's, Job's, and Job's sister, with Monument Peak combine to give the proper setting to the Lake.
Soon we are racing across the level to the Fish Hatchery, between avenues of quaking aspens and young tamaracks and pines. Suddenly we come upon a mired car, the driver of which had just crossed the Sierras from Placerville, with little or no difficulty, but coming to a soft piece of road here when going a trifle faster than he should, and the side of the road having caught a lot of snow-water, he had bogged and was working like a beaver to extricate himself. We had a stout rope along and it was the work of two or three minutes to get him out and we again pushed forward, gratified and smiling at the warmly expressed thanks of himself and his three happy women-folks who were enjoying their first trip into the Tahoe country, and already confessing their complete subjection to its thrall.