We visited Lake Tahoe for the 4th of July.  We arrived in South Tahoe, CA on Friday, July 3.  The drive up was beautiful, but the traffic was horrible.  We had made reservations at the Motel 6, it was cheap and close to the beach (that we thought we were going to watch the fireworks from).  On Friday, we drove around, getting a feel for the area and checking out our options for watching the fireworks on Saturday.  We had dinner at Brewery at Lake Tahoe.  Joel and I always enjoy trying the local brew pubs when we are on vacation.  Their seasonal beer tasted a lot like Blue Moon, but not as fruity... I enjoyed it alot!  Before heading back to the hotel for the night we stopped at the grocery store to pick-up food we could take with us to the beach that wouldn't need to kept cool and keep us satisfied all day.  We ended up with peanut butter and honey sandwiches along with a variety of snacks.

We decided to take the bus and walk to get to the beach for our adventure because we didn't want to deal with the traffic.  The morning commute to the beach worked out wonderfully, we even discovered a great trail to the beach and didn't have to walk along the road as we had planned. We arrived at the beach around 10 am after an enjoyable breakfast at IHOP.  The day was gorgeous and perfect for hanging out at the beach.  The only thing that would have been better is if we had a bit of shade.  We had the lake to jump into to cool off (unlike when we are along the Mississippi River when we watch the fireworks in La Crosse, WI).  The fireworks were wonderful and just seem bigger then anything we had seen before. We were much farther away from them then we usually are (when in La Crosse), but these seemed so much bigger. The fireworks were set off from a barge in Lake Tahoe. The day was relaxing and just what we needed.

If you want to see more photos you can check them out on our flickr page.

P.S. For those of you wondering how I take photographs of fireworks, you can visit my cheat sheet, a how to article from the New York Institute of Photography. I visit this website almost every time I know I am going to see fireworks for a refresher on how to photograph them. The main thing is you'll need a tripod to do a long exposure.