Donner Ablaze!
On Saturday, our family plan was to go to Chico for lunch to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. Since we had to drive two vehicles up there anyway, I thought of a good personal plan, that I would get up early and go out for sunrise somewhere, then drive to Chico from there. Donner Lake seemed like a good choice. The problem was, I didn’t know when I needed to be in Chico. I asked my wife on Friday night, what time is lunch on Saturday ? “Umm, I don’t know that yet. Sean and Marci [bro-in-law and wife] are on baby time now. We’re just playing it by ear.” Okay …. well, I need to know what time I need to be in Chico, in order to determine when I need to leave Truckee tomorrow morning. So anyway, on Saturday morning, I got up bright and early (4:30am) and drove out to Donner Lake for sunrise. Afterwards, I toodled around the Truckee area, trying to find some nice locations to shoot some Fall Colors. I called my wife again later on in the morning. What time is lunch ? “I still don’t know that. I haven’t heard anything yet.” Okay, great hunny. You call your mom and find out. Then call me back. I’m gonna go to another photo location. A little later, she called back. “Lunch is at 11:30 at La Hacienda.” 11:30 ?!?!?!?!? In order to be in Chico at 11:30, I would need to leave Truckee at 9AM. It is now 9:30AM. I am going to be 30 minutes late. See you at noon. Love you. Now here’s the funny part. I arrive in Chico at noon, just when I said I would get there (even though traffic was horrible). But I beat my wife there! I thought lunch was at 11:30, dear ? “Umm, yeah. Something like that.”, she says. It would’ve been super funny if I had beat everyone else there as well. Not quite, but Sean and Marci arrived there only barely before me.
As for Donner Lake sunrise, well it was utterly fabulous. It didn’t look that way though at first. Even though the forecast called for partly sunny skies with light cloud cover, it was completely overcast when I left Folsom in the morning. Not good. As my friend Brian would say, it looks like we will be “gray balled” for sunrise. I even thought of turning around and going back to bed! But … I decided to continue on. I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep anyway. As I got up to Donner Summit, I could see that maybe it might be a nice sunrise after all. There was already some color starting to show in the sky. I drove up the old Donner Pass highway up to the bridge and turnout area, scrambled down the rocks to a good looking spot, got out my camera, and promptly started taking many photos. It was a beautiful, glorious sunrise indeed.
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