We left Janice’s house at 8:15am and headed out with the destination in our minds of Winnemucca, NV or beyond if we felt like driving farther. We got to Donner Summit and began to admire the lake and how nice it would be to spend the night there. I was pretty sure there would be no campsites available on this Memorial Day weekend but John figured we would just take a look anyway. To our surprise there were openings in first come, first served Creek Campground. This is where we stayed in the snow last October! Ridge is full as they take reservations and Split Rock is not open yet. We were told to take any empty site so we chose the exact same campsite we had last October…funny. After unhooking we took a drive around the State Park side of the lake. What amazing improvements have been made. There is the boat rental area, which was there before, which I don’t really care for. All along the lakeside they have made a gray, paved walking path with a log boarder. It’s not wide but very nice. They have added a few restrooms and many picnic tables, fire pits, and barbeques from the lagoon area all along the lake to the China Cove area. It is a great improvement to the day use area and makes lakeside access so much more convenient. The tables and such are well spaced to maintain some privacy. I might add the paved walking path appears to go from the campgrounds to the lake and also to the Visitor’s Center. After taking a look there we drove into Truckee and Old Town to see what changes we could find there. The big Safeway on the East side of Hwy 80 is now a Save Mart and there is a new and even larger Safeway on the West side of Hwy 80. The town has built up some and looks like most “old towns” with the older store fronts and quaint shops and eateries. We stopped at Safeway and bought deli things for a couple meals and headed back to camp for our lunch. After lunch we did a lot of walking all around the different campground areas. I think there are more campgrounds than there used to be but I am not sure. They have certainly updated the restroom facilities, including the showers, laundry wash tubs, and little foot washing spigots in the larger restrooms. It’s .50 for a 5 minute shower, which is a good deal! We played cards when we were tired of walking and then had a salad for dinner. It is cooling off fast once the sun started to dip down behind the trees.
Our Campsite #52
Old Town Truckee
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