Lake Tahoe

If Santa Cruz was fun, than Lake Tahoe was incredible!! I made some great friends and had an awesome time. But before we headed over to Lake Tahoe, my family and I stopped for a night in San Francisco! It was rainy and COLD, but the city is super cool. We took a bus tour and got to see the major tourist sites like Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate. It was a lot of fun and a nice change in scenery.

The next day we were headed to Tahoe! On the way there we had to pick up my Grandma at the Sacramento airport. She was coming to vacation with us in Tahoe :) before we went to pick her up we had some time to kill, so my family and I made a pit stop--at the Jelly Belly Factory!! Hahaha, it was actually really fun and we got to pick up some candy to give to friends in Tahoe. We picked up my grandma (with another stop for In n Out Burger) and started our drive to South Lake Tahoe!

The very first thing we did when we arrived at the lake was go visit South Lake Tahoe SUP--the stand up paddle shop owned by the Brackett family. The Bracketts are awesome!! There's 10 kids, and they are all beyond nice and so fun to hang out with!! The best part--their shop was only 2 blocks from the house we were staying in, and from there a 3 minute walk to the beach! It's always sooo good to see the Brackett fam and their extended family. They were incredibly hospitable. The next day I went for an early morning paddle with Jenna and Janessa Brackett!! We detoured through a cool little creek and paddled over to a pine tree with an eagle nesting in it!! We saw the eagle fly away as a rainbow stretched ahead. It was truly beautiful and a little bit perfect :)

I spent the rest of the week paddling and hanging out with Jenna, Janessa, Josiah, and Joshua, as well as the Calvert family, Jay Wild, and more of the paddlers both local and from out of town coming in for the race. The lake is so beautiful!! It's crystal clear and really cold from the snowmelt. But the scenery is amazing and the people are so friendly. I spent my days paddling, trail running, and hanging out at El Dorado Beach. Every Wednesday, South Lake Tahoe SUP hosts a fun race! I decided to race it as a warmup for the big races that weekend. I scored first, stoked!! It was an awesome race, very exciting, and cool to compete with my friends.

By Friday a lot of the paddlers had come in for the race! After a warmup paddle with Candice Appleby and Anthony Vela (as well as Ka'lia Alexiou and her dad), we had a Performance Paddling team practice with all the kids in town for the race! Even though all the kids are younger than me and I feel kind of out of place, it's really nice to see all of the kids having fun. They are really fast and you can always count on them for friendly competition! Right after, there was something of a little sibling practice with the younger kids. But just as they were paddling out, it started to hail!! Some of the kids freaked out, but they still went on with the practice. It was pretty cool :)

Saturday was the Elite Race! It was a little over 5 mile, and a lot like the Wednesday night race course. I felt really good despite my asthma diagnosis, plus I was acclimated to the altitude, so I ended up in second!! After that, SUP Cross heats ran for the rest of the day! SUP Cross is like motocross, only everyone's on standup boards! It was really fun to watch! I competed, but unfortunately I fell off my board and couldn't catch back up, so I ended up in fourth. You never know what's going to happen in little races like that, so it's really exciting!

Sunday was the Distance Race, 14 miles from El Dorado Beach to Emerald Bay and back. It was so beautiful!! I got first, it was really awesome!! Next up was the relay races. I was on a team with 3 other Performance Paddling boys who are a little younger than me--Josiah, Nick, and Ian. We did all 3 relay races hahaha!! We won the kids, 4th in the amateur, and 3rd in pro!! It was a ton of fun. There was also an art contest for the kids, which my little sister won!! Riviera Paddlesurf is sending her a board with her custom artwork! She's stoked!!

Later that night, my mom and I went out to dinner with the Riviera team, Candice and Anthony, the Bracketts, the Calverts, the whole crew. It was one of the highlights of my trip. We all had a great time eating and laughing and celebrating an incredible weekend.

The next day it was time to fly home--nooo!! I was so sad to leave. Tahoe was one of the most fun trips of my year because of all the people I got to spend time with. I want to go baaack!!!!

The first week of July was restful before another week of volunteering before my biggest adventure yet--HAWAII!!