Summer Trip to Lake Tahoe

Hey guys! I am excited to share more about our family mini-vacation to Lake Tahoe today!

Lake Tahoe has always been a super special spot for Adam and I. We went there with a big group of friends when we first started dating, so it holds extra significance to us. We have our favorite coffee shops, restaurants and beaches there, now, so it’s always comforting to go back and see that nothing has changed. Plus, it’s only about a three hour drive from our house so it’s totally doable!

I don’t know about you, but I feel like anything over four hours with little kids in the car is just plain HARD. Three hours I can do…four hours, my eyeballs start to fall out. I always am sure to pack lots of little activities for the kids like stickers, water wows (a big hit!), new library books and we usually listen to at least one book on tape. Our kids don’t have ipads or anything like that, so I always try to hit up the Target dollar section a few days before a road trip to load up on stickers and other essentials. 

This time around, we rented an adorable little cabin on Homeaway for the week. I chose this place because I wanted a good sized outdoor space for the kids and this fit the bill! It ended up being so perfect and the yard was a HUGE hit. We basically spent all our time outside and I loved that I didn’t have to really worry as much about the boys because the whole yard is fenced in.

I get a lot of questions regarding our sleeping situation when we travel! Usually, the boys share a room and we get a room. Luke is still in a portacrib (here’s the one we have and love!) and Grayson is on a toddler air mattress (find it here – this thing is GOLD!). Pretty soon though, Luke will outgrow his little crib and when that happens we will move Luke to the air mattress and Grayson to whatever twin bed is in the room. I can’t stress how great this air mattress is, guys. Grayson calls it his “boat bed” because it’s like a big raft. It’s lasted us years now and if it’s lasted our family years, you KNOW it’s pretty durable. 😉 

In response to some of the Tahoe questions we have gotten, we always stay on the North Shore. We love both Kings Beach and Tahoe City. I love the actual beach in Kings Beach the best, but we usually do drive into Tahoe City for dinner because the restaurants are better. Next time we probably will just stay over there. 

Now we have pretty little kids, so we don’t really partake in all the summer lake activities that we will definitely do when the kids are older. I can’t wait until the boys are old enough to kayak, paddleboard and go rafting! Right now though, we tend to just play at the beach or play at the playground on the beach (there’s a great beach playground in both Kings Beach and Tahoe City that we frequent). Our mornings were pretty much spent doing just that before heading back to the cabin for nap time / rest time. In the afternoons, we usually went out for ice cream, hit up a playground and then either grabbed an early dinner or made dinner at the cabin.

This time, I brought a cooler of really good grass fed meat to cook up while we were there! I had bought some ground bacon burger meat (amazing!), steaks and breakfast sausage to cook on the trip. I also brought a bunch of fruit and some essentials so we didn’t have to spend a ton of extra money at the store. We had a blast grilling on the back deck while the kids ran around the yard under the giant pine trees. 

I already can’t wait to go back. Unfortunately, Adam and I had yucky summer colds while we were there last week but we both agreed that if we feel like crud we would rather be staring at the lake and the trees than at our house. 😉