The First week of 2001 I was at Lake Tahoe and the surrounding area with two friends, Rick McKnight and Jeff Donlin.

The pictures below show us three at Emerald Bay at Lake Tahoe, and another view of the bay
This memorial is at Donner pass. This is the pass where in 1847 a trek of settlers on their way to California was trapped by snow. The snow was as high as the base of the monument, 22 feet or 7 meters. These people resorted to eating their own dead, a fact that made this place famous.
Rick overlooking Washoe valley. Behind those mountains is Lake Tahoe. The picture was taken on the road to Virginia City.
That's me on the main street of Virginia City. This town was famous for the silver that was found here in 1859. In it's boom time this town was unbelievably rich. It had 40,000 inhabitants and supplied a lot of the money for the Union to fight the civil war. The riches of this so called "Comstock lode" contributed to the legend of the West. The town became famous again through the TV series Bonanza.
This trip was planned as a ski trip, but there was not much snow. The South West of the USA is a desert. It only rains in the winter months and that year the rains hadn't come yet. (It snowed two days later)