Day Two of the 2004 Mille Autunno, Tahoe and Sierra Autumn colors

I slept for eleven hours. Amazing what some sleep will do to get you feeling better. My cold is now mostly gone... just an occasional cough. We get ourselves ready, and head over to the cafe next door for some breakfast. After that, we packed up the car, and were probably one of the last ones out of the hotel. I drove the first segment, so not too many photos, sorry. While we were going through Portola, we came upon the little 1953 Siata 208S, obviously lost. They pulled in behind us as we made our way out of Portola, and out onto some high country valley with some real western landscape... wide open, and lonely. We were on a little 2-lane road called California A-24. I opened up the E-type and cooked along at 80 MPH or so. Even though the Siata's engine is half the size of the XK, it has a miniature alloy body and probably half the weight of the (pretty light as it is!) Jaguar. He was able to hang onto my tail OK, catching up whenever I had to make a right-angle turn.

Above: The Siata follows us out of Portola.

We fly along the empty valley, which looks more like Nevada or Idaho than California. At this rate of speed we eventually catch up to the pack of rally cars as we get closer to Truckee and get up into the mountains.

Both the Siata and us pass a Ferrari, an Alfa, and an AC, and eventually find ourselves sort of stuck behind the big Mercedes, which itself is stuck behind a truck. The truck is moving along at a good pace, so this little knot of rally cars just hums along with it. The Siata and us trade places a couple of times, I think just to get different pictures of each other.

We finally come to a highway interchange where all the "normal" traffic goes left, and all us rally cars go right. We pass the big Mercedes, and head on into Truckee for some gas.

Above: Two E-types filling up in Truckee, California.

From Truckee we head down to Lake Tahoe's north shore, and then make our way around the Lake counter-clockwise on the west shore, to Camp Richardson on the very south end of the lake where we had lunch on the beach at a nice place called the "Beacon". Tahoe was a bit congested, and other than passing a caravan of Corvettes going the other way, it was just a mass of lumbering SUVs all absent-mindedly wandering like all SUVs seem to do. Thankfully around the southwest corner the congestion thinned out and we had some nice views, including some great overlooks at Emerald Bay. Where ever we were able to break away from the lumbering SUVs, I took photographs, or took little movies.

Above: The official rally photographer gets all the cars lined up at lunch for a photo. Poor guy, it was like cat wrangling I'm sure.

I tried some low-angle shots out the side of the car, and then tried something new...

...holding the door open and putting the camera out the bottom. Yeah, I'm nuts.

After lunch we took off and ran into an outing of some sort, probably a local Triumph club. TR3's TR4's Spitfires, etc... all headin the other direction. I waved at all of them but none of them returned the favor. I always give a hearty wave to other "LBCs" (Little British Cars) while out driving the Jag. I usually get big waves back, but I guess I didn't realize Triumph owners (at least in California) were so snobby. We headed south and quickly left the main highways for a few secondary ones. There was still traffic, but much less than around Tahoe. WE went along through the mountains, with lots of fall color to see, and fun roads to drive. We were alone, with no other cars from the group around. I drove about 100 miles just flying along through the mountains. It was very nice. Dad however was worried about the weather. There were typical afternoon mountain thundershowers around. I said we would likely thread our way through them. I have good weather luck. =)

We switched drivers at a wide spot in the road and Dad took his turn at the wheel. Within a mile he got stuck behind an RV. The RV had pulled into a "turnout" to let a couple of cars by and my dad hesitated, so the guy had to get back on the road to maintain some sort of momentum. Oh well. Of course, our weather luck changed too, as immediately we found ourselves in a shower. I guess Dad's luck isn't as good as mine. Thankfully it was brief, and we came out of it only slightly drizzled upon.

I navigated for Dad, which was easy for a while, as we had some long stretches. I occupied myself doing this, and this. Then we went off on some really weird roads, such as "railroad flat road" which was very twisty, and occasionally one lane, and very weird navigation. Lots of intersections not called out in the directions. We were supposed to take a right at a road called "Jesu Maria Road" but we never found it. We ended up using the map to find our way to the final destination of Jackson, California. At dinner we heard from folks who *did* find Jesu Maria, and they found out why is was called that. Apparently it was nine miles of one-lane, tight switchbacks down a long ridge.

The dinner was excellent. We ate at a quiet Italian resturant and probably made a bit more noise than they usually have on a Saturday evening.

On to Sunday...