The North Lake Tahoe Ale Trail Campaign is the latest attraction for those looking for a watering hole at the end of the day.

An interactive online map has been created. Participants will receive a free Tahoe Ale Trail sticker after they share a photo online with the hashtag #TahoeAleTrail.

The tourism campaign is designed to highlight North Tahoe’s craft beer scene along with its hiking, mountain biking, road cycling, paddleboarding and kayaking.

The project was funded by a grant from TravelNevada.

·       Fire Fest is Sept. 26 from 10am-3pm at Lake Tahoe Airport. The free event highlights fire and life safety for children and families.

·       El Dorado County Supervisor Shiva Frentzen is having two town hall meetings – Sept. 17 from 6-7:30pm at Cameron Park Fire Station No. 89 and Oct. 1 from 6:30-8pm at the Shingle Springs Community Center. For more info, call 530.621.5651.

·       A website has been created to highlight South Lake Tahoe’s efforts to create a legacy plan.

·       Here are the El Dorado-Tahoe and Sierra roadwork schedules from Caltrans for the week.

·       Tahoe Citizens’ Committee is hosting the Douglas County Sewer Improvement District Sept. 29 at 5pm. District personnel will give a presentation about the new plan to keep future sewer rates down. The meeting will be at 169 Highway 50, Stateline.

By Scott Smith, AP

FRESNO — A vast and stubborn wildfire that has proven California’s biggest this year was expected to spew smoke through the long Labor Day weekend, leaving some campgrounds empty and prompting health warnings.

This Rough Fire is the one that has sporadically brought smoke into the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The fire burning east of Fresno grew overnight to 85,894 acres. It was 31 percent contained as of Sunday morning.

The blaze is just one factor that has challenged people planning outdoor activities in recent weeks, officials said.

An infestation of bugs swarmed high-desert communities on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. In addition, an 18-day manhunt along the famed Pacific Crest Trail ended with the suspect’s death.

The fire that began July 31 during a lightning strike has closed roads and about 10 campgrounds around Hume Lake and Kings Canyon.

U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Alonzo urged holiday campers to head to the mountains far south of the fire, where they can expect cleaner air and better views of nature, including some of the range’s 100 groves of Giant Sequoia trees, some of the Earth’s largest and oldest living things.

“We’re concerned about people trying to stay in their tents and outdoors with so much smoke in the air,” Alonzo said. “It’s not healthy.”

Smoke from the fire prompted the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District to issue a health warning to people headed to the mountains and foothills of Tulare and Fresno counties.

The district says children and the elderly are especially vulnerable. Residents on the valley floor from Merced and south to Kern County may also notice smoke into next week.

Half a dozen wildfires were burning throughout California, a relatively small number compared to the past two hot months that kept firefighters running, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Despite the welcomed lull caused by cooler temperatures, he said fire season is entering its peak time.

Vegetation remains dry from the hot summer, and the winds pick up in the transition to fall, fanning the smallest spark.

“Conditions are still just as dry as July and August,” he said. “One less spark this Labor Day weekend means one less wildfire.”

Multimillionaire George C. Whittell Jr. built the Thunderbird Lodge in the 1930s. It stands 1.5 miles down the Nevada shoreline south of Sand Harbor State Park.

More beach area is visible because of the drought.  Photo/Bill Kingman

Lake Tahoe water level is 3 feet below its natural rim of 6,223 feet, or about 6 feet below typical average. The water normally would be lapping at the deck chairs on that sandy alcove.

The original 1950 scale model of the boat. Photo/Bill Kingman

In 1940, Whittell took delivery of a 55-foot mahogany speedboat which he had commissioned. The Thunderbird had twin 550-hp Kermath engines and was designed by John L. Hacker. There are tow models on display at the Thunderbird Lodge.

The 1960s scale model of Harrah’s remodeled Thunderbird. Photo/Bill Kingman

After purchasing the Thunderbird from Whittell in 1962, Nevada gambler Bill Harrah had the open rear deck enlarged, added a flying bridge, and replaced the engines with bigger twin Allison aircraft engines.

Upon its 75th anniversary, plus one month since its original delivery to Whittell, the Thunderbird was taken out of the water in August 2015 for its engines to be replaced and the bottom refinished. To do this, the yacht was taken southward by water to the Tahoe Keys Marina which has a hoist large enough to lift it. It then was trucked back to Incline Village for the refurbishing work.

A Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society postcard. Photo/Eric Jarvis

The Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society now owns the lodge and the yacht. History, information and many photos are on the website.

— Bill Kingman

South Tahoe code enforcement officer Danny Loyola confirms details with dispatch. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

It’s about 12:30am Saturday and a distinct conversation can be heard coming from the back yard of the next street. It’s a group of about 10 who are up from the Bay Area partying. They are here for this long weekend.

They are going home with a $270 citation for excessive noise at a vacation home rental.

They claim they had no idea they needed to keep things down starting at 10pm. Danny Loyola, enforcement code officer for South Lake Tahoe, informs them excessive noise anytime of day won’t be tolerated.

In this case, a neighbor backing the Dedi Street rental called the police about the noise.

Loyola, who works Thursday-Sunday from 4pm-2am, is the man responsible for keeping the peace between loud out-of-towners and locals.

The woman who called about this house on Sept. 5 said she was woken up from a deep sleep. She tried conversing with the visitors over the fence. They reportedly told her they would keep it down. They didn’t. They were  “obnoxious” according to the caller, so she called SLTPD.

Loyola drove around the neighborhood to gauge the sounds from various vantage points. The vacationers were loud. It wasn’t just muffled sounds.

No sign was on the house designating it as a vacation home rental (VHR), which is mandated on the permit. Loyola makes a note of this.

For every encounter he has on a shift Loyola fills out a disturbance advisement card. It gets placed in the permittee’s file so there is a record of how many times enforcers are called to a particular house and for what reason. Noise is the primary reason the enforcers are called out at night. Garbage and parking are bigger issues for the day shift enforcers.

At each call Loyola asks to speak with the person who rented the house. In this case it was an intoxicated woman. She’s coherent to a point. She understands they were loud and that this is a bad thing. However, she seems confused as to why she is getting the citation. Loyola is patient with her. Her two male friends try to explain it.

Loyola had called for backup from a sworn officer. It just felt better. He goes into these situations not knowing who will be on the other side of the door. Most times he confronts people who have been drinking. His radio, flashlight and pepper spray are his “weapons” if things were to go sideways. That’s why when it’s possible, an officer with more firepower is by his side. More important, it’s just another body.

South Lake Tahoe is taking a more proactive approach to enforcing the rules about vacation home rentals. This includes having people dedicated to patrolling the streets during the likely days and hours when guests are more prone to misbehaving.

On this particular Friday-Saturday shift, Loyola receives just two calls. The other is on San Jose Avenue. From the street the voices are much more subdued compared to the other house. They are from Ohio and say they have no idea about the rule concerning noise.

Everyone seems to be out of the hot tub by the time Loyola leaves. He issues them a warning and says he hopes not to see them for the rest of the weekend. They agree.

Loyola has been much busier on previous weekends compared to this last long weekend of summer. When he’s not on a VHR call he is doing code enforcement of a different kind. This includes finding abandoned vehicles, cars parked on city streets without current registration and other infractions, as well as making sure all is well at the city parking garage at Heavenly Village. He also is another pair of eyes for law enforcement for anything suspicious that might be going on that falls outside of his scope of work.

By Joe Mathews

Anchor me, baby.

Because I find it impossible to write with restraint when politicians use babies to prey on prejudice and misinform the public in the service of winning votes.

Joe Mathews

That’s the story of the Republican presidential contest, as Donald Trump and his opponents make xenophobic nonsense about “anchor babies” a top issue. I won’t rehash here all the debunking of this phony idea that hordes of pregnant immigrants are coming here to have babies. Race-baiting bunk is a staple of America’s presidential politics, and nothing I write will change that.

But when it comes to the babies part of anchor babies, I can’t stay silent. I am 100-percent pro-baby. And I’m old enough to remember when politicians were, too, cooing at the diaper set instead of scapegoating them as a peril to the republic.

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets are helping to spread the ignorance by portraying anchor babies as a “controversy,” or “complex issue” (as the L.A. Times called it) when it is no such thing.

When it comes to babies—anchor or any other kind—the only issue we face is that we don’t have enough of them.

Here’s an invitation: If you think you have too many babies in your community, please buy tickets to California for them and their parents. We sure could use them.

Our state is facing a historic decline in its number of young children. According to USC, California had nearly 200,000 fewer children under age 10 in 2010 as it had in 2000, with the losses heavy in coastal counties. Why? Flat immigration, the high cost of living, and a birth rate that has dropped below the replacement level to maintain a population.

Guess what, America? The country’s birth rate dropped below replacement in 2007 and hasn’t recovered; the recession left us with a baby deficit of 2.3 million. Which makes immigrants and their babies a solution to our baby bust, not a problem. Indeed, serious presidential candidates should be offering plans to incentivize the arrival of more babies — and make them more successful grownups. After all, the biggest domestic challenge for this country is how a dwindling number of working-age people is going to support our growing population of retirees.

Yes, I know that Jeb Bush — whose own birth anchored him in presidential politics — is arguing that the real “anchor baby” problem involves so-called “birth tourism” by Asian families who come here to have babies and pick up a U.S. passport for them on their way back to their home countries. Media outlets have covered this “issue” for years in California regions with large populations of Chinese descent, especially the San Gabriel Valley, where I live. Isn’t so-called birth tourism a trivialization of citizenship or an incursion into our communities, as Bush suggests?

Oh, please.

Getting citizenship has always required money in some form, even if it’s just to get here and make a life. This country is full of malls financed by foreigners here on a popular investor visa program. And what American could be opposed to tourism? In a terrific Rolling Stone story on birth tourism, one Chinese couple that came to L.A. to give birth sees a Laker game, visits Venice Beach, and shops at our outlet malls. We need as much of this sort of thing as possible.

The only problems with Chinese birth tourists are that there aren’t enough of them (estimates are in the thousands) and that they head back to China instead of making their lives here. U.S. citizenship is seen as a form of insurance against instability back home by wealthy foreigners, and many of the U.S.-born Chinese babies won’t retain their insurance past age 18, since China doesn’t permit dual citizenship into adulthood. Here’s hoping that, at that age, many of those babies will choose to remain Americans, study here, and become productive citizens whose taxes pay my Social Security.

To be fair, presidential candidates aren’t the only ones unnecessarily raising alarms about babies. Federal law enforcement challenges pregnant mothers flying into the country about their intentions, even though birth tourism is legal. The feds even raided maternity hotels in Southern California as part of an investigation into the finances of birth tourism businesses. Given the national baby shortage, perhaps the feds should stick to their usual pursuits, like prosecuting marijuana activity and collecting metadata.

Strip away rhetoric and rationalizations, and what you have is an unreasoning fear of babies. After all, babies and their immigrant parents represent everything this country needs – investment, risk-taking, striving for a better life.

So if you have a problem with these babies, you have a problem with the American dream. Maybe you should consider emigrating.

Love it or leave it, baby.

Joe Mathews is California and innovation editor for Zócalo Public Square, for which he writes the Connecting California column.

By Mark Armao, Wall Street Journal

There are slightly more than three trillion trees in the world, a figure that dwarfs previous estimates, according to the most comprehensive census yet of global forestation.

Using satellite imagery as well as ground-based measurements from around the world, a team led by researchers at Yale University created the first globally comprehensive map of tree density. Their findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

A previous study that drew on satellite imagery estimated that the total number of trees was about 400 billion. The new estimate of 3.04 trillion is multiple times that number, bringing the ratio of trees per person to 422 to 1.

Read the whole story

Ed Hartsinck

Former Lake Tahoe resident Edward G. (Ed) Hartsinck died Aug. 29, 2015. He was 92.

Mr. Hartsinck was born Nov. 21, 1922, in Albany and raised in Oakland. He died at his home in Angels Camp after a short illness.

He and his wife, Sally, had retired to Incline Village in 1974. They moved to Angels Camp in 2001 to be near his daughter, Lynn.

He and his partner Ken Reilly built the only seven-story condominium on Lake Tahoe.

Mr. Hartsinck enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, where he was stationed at the equipment depot in India getting ready in 1943 for the invasion over the “Hump” into Burma. When he returned to his home in California in 1945, he went to work for his Army buddy’s father who owned a lift truck franchise. Eventually, Hartsinck owned Lifton Inc. from 1965 until he retired in 1974 to Tahoe where he enjoyed water skiing, traveling, golf and being a song and dance man.

He is survived by his wife, Sally; daughter Lynn and son in law Bill Goff of Arnold; granddaughters Kimberlynn, Melissa, Skyla, Teela, Lacey and grandson Dutch Lawrence. He was preceded by son, Larry.

A celebration of life will be at the Country Lane Estates Social Hall in Arnold on Sept. 19 at 1pm.

Crews work on a multi-use trail in Stateline. Photo/Provided

A six-member U.S. Forest Service trail crew has been busy reconstructing the Kingsbury Stinger Trail on lower Kingsbury Grade.

The upgraded trail will remain open to off-highway vehicles 50-inches wide (or less) including all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles, and non-motorized recreation use such as mountain bikes, hikers and equestrians.

The existing route is located in a sensitive drainage area that has many steep, eroded trails, which affects water quality and degrades the natural habitat. Nearly 3-miles long, the trail descends 1,300 feet and is very difficult for OHV and mountain bike users due to the exceptionally steep grades and deeply rutted surface. The realigned trail runs approximately 4.5 miles, with the same 1,300-foot elevation change. It will twist through stands of large trees and boulders and provide views of Lake Tahoe.

The upgraded trail is expected to be completed by the summer 2016.

The proposed action and a map of the project area are available online.

Washoe County inmates clean the graffiti off the church. Photo/Provided

By Scott Sonner, AP

The minister of one of several churches hit by a string of vandalism on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe says they appear to be satanic attacks by an individual who is “very angry with Jesus.”

“I’ve seen nothing that would give a hint it was socially or politically motivated,” said the Rev. Jeffrey Ogden, Presbyterian pastor at Village Church in Incline Village.

“Everything that has been posted, the satanic symbols on the front doors of all the churches — it was satanic,” he told the Associated Press on Friday. “It was anti-Christian, anti-Jesus — more theologically motivated. This is a Satanist who is opposed to Jesus.”

The FBI is offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of anyone responsible for the incidents, which began with graffiti at five Tahoe-area churches in April on Easter Sunday and continued in August.

The FBI has declined formal comment on the investigation, but Ogden said agents have told him they are “looking at this as a potential hate crime.”

Last weekend, someone tried to saw down a wooden across in front of Ogden’s church. They returned Tuesday night or early Wednesday and tried unsuccessfully again to bring the cross down at the Village Church, he said.

“This person seems to be very angry with Jesus, and the church,” Ogden said.

Some of the graffiti included, “Jesus has already lost,” and “Jesus won’t save your souls,” he said.

“So far from everything I’ve heard, it appears to be an individual,” Ogden said. “It does not appear to be rationale to me. Obviously the person seems to have a lot of anger inside them.”

fSt. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church also was hit a second time late last Saturday night. The considerable damage there included broken windows and equipment, Washoe County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Clark said.

St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church also was vandalized again on Aug. 7, when someone painted graffiti on the building and a car parked on church property.

Ogden said it’s clear the vandal is not targeting a specific denomination.

“One church that was hit was one of the more liberal in the community. The Catholic church and ours — we are more conservative in our theology. They are not making distinctions based on our social or political views,” he said.

Several members of the churches attended a prayer gathering Monday night at Cornerstone Community Church to show support for each other.

“It has been a blessing to be able to gather together as people, not focused on traditions or theologies, but coming together to say we support one another as community members,” Ogden said.

“It doesn’t mean that as Christians we don’t have some differences — some pretty profound differences on some things. But when something like this happens, those are not as important. Love is more important, truth is more important, standing together is more important.”