June 10 - 11, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

Infiltration, Immersion, and Indulgence

The next morning (a Monday), we got ready, had some oatmeal, then drove back to the Atlantis Casino. We walked our way over to the event center and right through the doors past the security guard whose only gesture towards us was a “Good morning”. So much for “invitation only”. We started looking through the vendors’ stalls and soon found ourselves talking to a lady about the jewelry she was offering.

Faith: “Good morning”
Her: “Good morning, the jewelry in front is for sale. Who are you with?”
<awkward pause>
Me: “We aren’t with anyone… We just wandered in here.”
Her: “Oh, well there are people checking badges, and you’ll get booted pretty quick.”
Us: “Okay”

So we left… her stall and continued wandering through the rest of the convention. Just about every outdoor name brand you could think of and more were there: Cotopaxi, North Face, Black Diamond, Gregory, Patagonia, Darn Tough, Sioux Falls Great Outdoor Store, Backpacker’s Pantry, Outdoor Research, Chaco, Camelbak, Eagle Nest Outfitters (ENO), Kelty, Big Agnes, and many more. We didn’t talk to anyone else, but it was really cool to see gear from all sorts of small and big name outdoor brands. We made sure to grab a few stickers and Bublys to commemorate our infiltration. We spent the next few hours exploring town and getting groceries and gas before heading up to Lake Tahoe.

We debated going to Lake Tahoe, but I am so glad we did. Lake Tahoe is exquisite: the water is an unbelievable clear blue and the surrounding mountains and forests are gorgeous. I now understand why I’ve seen and heard so much about it. We spent the afternoon at Sand Harbor State Park enjoying the sunshine and cool waters then found a parking spot at a trailhead that leads to Chimney Beach and Secret Cove Nude Beach. Yep, much to my and probably your surprise, there’s a nude beach on Lake Tahoe. This parking area is one of the only free and 24-hour parking areas around, so the lot was filled with people sleeping in their vehicles be they Sprinters, Tacomas, or Odysseys. We watched the sun set over the lake then tucked ourselves in as the mosquitoes came out in force.

We woke up and got moving since I had taken most of the previous day off and thus needed to get some hours in. We headed over to King’s Beach on the north side of Lake Tahoe, and Faith dropped me off at a coffee shop while she explored every nook and cranny (what the heck even is a nook or a cranny?) of the town. Despite the background cacophony, I got good work done and Faith found a beautiful dress for $1 at a thrift store. If you didn’t know, Faith is a wizard at finding deals. Almost every time she gets something, she has me guess how much it cost. If I ever guess over $10, I usually overshoot by an order of magnitude.

Today was Faith’s real birthday, so Faith’s parents got us passes to a high ropes course near Tahoe. The course was filled with zip lines and swaying obstacles of many kinds hanging high in the trees that would have resulted in my death many times had I not been harnessed to a safety line. In a providential arrangement, a close family friend, Dan (the officiant at our wedding), was in town on business and invited us to have a nice dinner at his hotel. So, we changed after the course, me into nothing special and Faith into her beautiful $1 dress and headed a few miles down the road. At dinner we met Scott, one of Dan’s coworkers, and enjoyed a very fancy meal of duck with foie gras and Chilean sea bass with mussels. The food was incredible and our company offered engaging conversation. For Faith’s birthday, we were given this restaurant’s version of a Baked Alaskan: a marshmallow-encased column of brownie and ice cream. This was not the first, not the second, not the third, but the FOURTH time that someone had said it was Faith’s birthday and she had gotten a free dessert in the past three weeks. Suffice to say, Faith has gotten her fair share of complimentary birthday desserts this year. As the sun set over the lake once again, we found a pull off on a highway north of the lake and fell into a well-fed slumber.