Thankful for fresh snow on my tongue: Lake Tahoe’s Northstar

We didn’t make it to the Critical Mass ride in San Francisco as planned. A snow storm on I-80 made chains required, traffic awful, and rain likely for SF–a combination of factors which encouraged us to pull off I-80 at Highway 267 to check out Northstar as the traffic slowed near Truckee.

My iPhone had already shown us that traffic was not great for I-80 going West and the traffic looked mostly stopped heading East toward Tahoe from Sacramento. Sitting in that kind of a traffic jam didn’t seem like much of a vacation no matter how much we wanted to ride with the Critical Mass today.

So instead, we’re staying here at the Village at Northstar  (stay and play deal got us a f=room in the village with 2 “free” lift tickets!) It’s been snowing steadily all afternoon and evening. I couldn’t tell you officially how many inches of snow fell, but informally, in places it came up to the small boy’s knees.

This was his first time to experience snowfall, and he found it quite a delightful experience. He chased after snowflakes with his tongue sticking out, laughing and giggling. After a delicious dinner of Greek pizza (pesto, artichokes, sundried tomatoes, and kalamata olives)  with a glass of Renwood Syrah at Rubicon Pizza with excellent service from Amy and Colton (okay, make that a glass and a half–thanks Amy!), we strolled around the snowdrifts in the Village and checked out the Rec Center.

Did you know there’s 350 average inches of snowfall here at Northstar a year? Wow.

We’re very grateful our VW westy and our bikes are safe and protected in the carport here. And tomorrow when we ski (lift tickets come with our room!), we won’t have to drive to get here.

One last note about this place: they really get service. Everyone we’ve talked to here is really nice and super helpful. After being disappointed by Boreal and Squaw, and not impressed with customer service at either place, it’s amazing how far some genuine customer service can go.

But they won’t budge on prices–we tried for a second night deal but no. They’re nice but not that nice!  And we’re happy with the deal we got: $250 for a nice second floor room right looking into a pine tree covered in mardi gras beads here in the village and fast free wireless and two lift tickets which would cost us at least $65 each. If you do the math, that’s a decent deal–plus more time to ski.

Now to get some sleep and see how the slopes are tomorrow with fresh snow!