Travel to Escapade, 5/3/14

Day 1 - Saturday, May 3, 2014
California

We are embarking on our longest vacation ever, for us.  We left home today and traveled through the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and into Nevada.  California has been in a severe drought for the past several years.  The snow pack, that we depend on to store water for summer use as it melts in the mountains and runs down rivers to supply water to the low lands and reservoirs, was only at 19 % of average for this time of year.  Some areas that they use every year to measure the snow pack and water content of that snow, had no snow at all. 

 As you can see, there is very little snow on these mountains near the town of Cisco Grove, CA.  As we continued on to the Donner Pass, high point on I-80 in CA, there was more snow, but usually it would be deeper than this and even deeper as we continued up in elevation. 

We stopped at the Donner Summit rest area and saw the following.

These castle peaks were across from where we parked in the rest area. 

This pond was the result of melting snow at the rest area.  Very beautiful anyway.  This was the deepest that we saw.

As we were heading further east on I-80, we notices a line on the mountain side.  It was the snow sheds that were built to protect the railroad tracks from all of the snow that would fall and tumble down onto the tracks.  The sheds formed a "tunnel" where the trains could have a chance to make safe passage and keep commerce flowing from coast to coast in the winter.

This is a close up of the snow sheds.  They run for miles and miles.

Here is Donner Lake. 

 

All of the "Donner" names are in tribute to the Donner Party, a group of pioneers, who were caught in an early snow storm in the winter of 1846-47.  Only 48 of the 87 people survived the winter in the mountains near here.

 

Here were some interesting cloud formations that we saw.  The sunset was not very colorful tonight.

That was the first day of travel.  Tomorrow we will continue along I-80 on our way to Indiana and the Escapees Escapade.