Donner Memorial Park and Truckee

On the first full day of our trip, we went up to Donner Memorial Park. There was a visitors center there that we walked through and learned about the Donner Party and what they suffered.

After the museum we joined a walking tour with one of the Rangers. He took us to some of the cabin sites and the memorial in the area. There was an event that day and one of the booths was giving out snow cones, so we stopped to learn about the difference between shaved ice and bigger pieces of ice and why that made a difference for the Donner party. And then we got to enjoy a snow cone.

The littles were a little bored with the tour, but they had some nice rocks to play on.

I broke off from the tour towards the end because these kids were bored. There was a little trail that went through some greenery. The mosquitos were bad, though, so we didn't take our time walking through the area.

We waited by the memorial. They claimed that the snow was as tall as the stones on this pedestal, but the tour guide shot that theory down saying even in a record-breaking snowfall year, it hasn't even made it more than half that height. They should probably change the plaque.

Ashley found a bug on the trail and the little guy entertained her until the rest of the group caught up to us.

Then we took a picture and decided to try and drive over to Donner Lake. But when we got over there, there was no parking and we realized that we had to pay to enter the beach are. So we headed into Truckee instead.

They had this portable jail set up in the parking lot of Donner Memorial Park, but we visited the real think in Truckee.

The kids got locked in the cell.

After the jail, we went to eat at Jax on the Tracks. It was an hour wait though, so we walked around the shops a little before eating.

We found this cute little bookstore and stopped inside to look around.

The kids found a favorite book and sat down to read for a bit. It was a nice, air-conditioned place to wait so that was good for them.

Dinner at the diner was good and everyone was in a much better mood after eating.

We found a park in the city to play at for a while. We also took a football and frisbees. It had the cutest little train track around the playground. We found out that we missed the mini running train by a couple of hours (it is only open every other weekend for a few hours).

The kids had fun playing though. We headed back to the cabin when everyone got bored there.