Getting higher

35 ednotePart of the marketing of Sacramento is what is not here, but close by. It’s the second or third thing locals tell you when you arrive. If you can’t find enough interesting things to do in Sacramento, well, there’s more good stuff only a couple of hours away. Apparently, some residents are looking for more than Sacramento can offer (See “The Strange Loves of William T. Vollmann,” by Ben Ehrenreich, page 20).

The most oft heard suggestions: The City to the west, the mountains to the east. This past weekend, I sought a higher plane, a return to the tranquility and majestic beauty of the Rockies. But I found that it’s not that easy to find.

The first difficulty, of course, was the holiday traffic on Highway 50 (Why isn’t there a bypass around those two stop lights in Placerville?). Then there’s South Lake Tahoe, an aging boomtown in need of 20 years of retroactive planning and zoning. The monolithic casino hotels are amazingly out of place for the surroundings—it should be renamed Las Vegas by the Lake.

But climbing the lifts onto the Sierras at the appropriately named Heavenly and finding that view of the lake was worth the hassle. Gliding across the Skyline traverse reaffirmed the marketing pitch.

Vollmann can find hell in The City, but I found heaven was indeed higher in the east.