Bob and I meet for breakfast at the casino’s coffee shop. Jarrett is editing the video clip we worked on last night, so he stays in his room and misses the granola-yogurt- fresh-fruit bar that he would truly appreciate. It was a Jarrett-friendly breakfast.
We all want to be ready for this day. California, here we come. We load up and start out of Reno, getting back on Interstate 80 just west of town, and we don’t get on a two-lane till we take the exit to Truckee, California, where the beautiful Donner Lake has made this a tourist destination, a rustic mountain resort and vacation town. Everywhere we look, there were interesting little cabins and businesses, places where there are undoubtedly great people with good stories. We don’t pause. We keep driving.
We follow Route 40 up into the Sierra Nevada mountain peaks toward Donner Pass. The pass and the lake and the state park and lots of other places around here are named for the ill-fated Donner Party of emigrants heading west to California in 1846. They got trapped around here by very severe winter storms, and there are tales that some of Donner party folks resorted to cannibalism to survive. Good stories that still give us shivers.
As you head up to the Donner Pass you can see evidence of all the various sorts of travelling that have used this pathway. Native Americans passed through here first, then pioneers in the nineteenth century, followed shortly thereafter by the railroad which did some monumental constructions including snowsheds over tracks so that the winters wouldn’t stop the trains. You can still see some of the original road that was the winding path of the 1913 Lincoln Highway, and you still drive across a beautiful 1926 concrete arch viaduct called the Donner Summit Bridge as you take Route 40 up.
We stop and get many shots of the bridge although it’s raining, it’s sunny, it’s cloudy and dull, the weather’s changing all the time. This bridge, also often called the Rainbow Bridge, was slated for replacement in the 1980s but was saved by local historians and bridge-aficionados who restored it in the late 1990s to its original glory. It’s a beauty.
I call Brian Butko from the parking lot at one end of the bridge, just to let him know where we are, how the weather is, and that we don’t have time to see all the things he says we HAVE to see.
We pause at the very top where there’s a parking lot for a ski resort and school, but then soon start down the western slope of the mountains. We’re not hungry yet, so we look for a ramp back onto the interstate and keep zooming toward San Francisco.