Day 2:

After hanging with our friends Scott and Chris in Reno, Devin and I ventured toward the Lake Tahoe area. Scott had found this really cool cabin up that way, and gave us directions on how to find it. It is such a gorgeous area, and autumn was showing off its fiery colors.

Truckee, California

After that we hit up King Beach on Lake Tahoe. We took advantage of getting out of the car for a bit and walked along the shore line to this really neat dock area. Driving along the shores of Lake Tahoe is seriously a treat. With cliff sides dropping into beautiful turquoise coves and breathtaking views, I’m glad we took the scenic route to see it.

King’s Beach, Lake Tahoe

We took US 395 to head towards Benton Hot springs, and we drove by this neat old barn. Devin is always such a good sport to pull over whenever I want to stop and take a photo.

As we traveled south toward Benton Hot Springs, we stopped at Travertine Hot Springs, which is a really neat natural hot spring located in a California state park. For being in the middle of nowhere, it sure had a lot of visitors! We were lucky to get a few photos before more people filed in.

Travertine Hot Springs

Devin and I drove past Mono Lake a couple of years ago on our first road trip. As you come down US 395 toward Lee Vining, you will see Mono Lake off to the right. It is a large and shallow, and is said to have been formed at least 760,000 years ago. The alkaline lake has unusual formations called tufa pinnacles or tufa towers (calcium carbonate) that you can see in the photo below.

Mono Lake

We passed these neat rock formations just outside of Benton, CA on Benton Crossing Road.

Our final stop for the next couple of days was Benton Hot Springs, located in Benton, California. We got there with plenty of daylight left to set up our campsite and do a little exploring before a nice soak in our very own tub.

Benton Hot Springs

There are rooms at the inn as well as a cabin at Benton Hot Springs, but I absolutely recommend camping here if you get the chance. Each campsite has it’s own unique tub, and they are all so pretty! We stayed in campsite #6 which was surrounded by short trees that offered some more privacy, and kept our tent out of the wind. We absolutely loved it. We will do some more exploring of this area that you can check out in my next blog post.