Inmates in El Dorado County jail in South Lake Tahoe entered 18 culinary categories in this year’s county fair and took home 17 awards.

Since 2007, inmates have entered their goods into the El Dorado County Fair. They received 10 first place and seven second place ribbons.

The purpose of the program is to teach incarcerated individuals usable job skills for when they are released. Inmates earn college credits.

They are taught cooking methods, baking and pastry, catering, and sanitation to name a few.

The Sugar Pine Foundation is celebrating its 10th anniversary on Aug. 14 at the Valhalla Boathouse on the South Shore.

The Sugar Pine Foundation was founded in 2005 to bring back the legendary sugar pines and other white pines. To date, the nonprofit has identified more than 65 sugar pines and three western white pines in the Tahoe area that are resistant to white pine blister rust, a devastating exotic fungus. More than 80,000 seedlings, progeny of the resistant parent trees, have been planted.

Anniversary events include:

2pm – Art show and live mural
4pm -Tahoe History” by the Washoe Tribe Cultural Resource Department
6pm – Giants of the Forest by leading Champion Trees discoverer Michael Taylor
8pm – Live music by the Good Samaritans and Weapon.

Tickets are $20 online or at the door. Children get in free. Food will be sold on site by Tacos Por Favor and summer drinks by Free Bird Cafe. Beer and wine will be sold in the Boathouse after 6pm.

Internationally bestselling author Garth Stein, whose book “The Art of Racing in the Rain” has sold more than 4 million copies and been published in 35 languages, will appear at Tahoe WordWave this fall.

WordWave is a three-day festival (Oct. 9-11) on the grounds of Valhalla at the Tallac Historic Site on the South Shore.

Stein’s newest book, “A Sudden Light,” is set in a large historic house in the woods similar to Valhalla’s Grand Hall, the site of WordWave’s Friday night steampunk ball. It will kick off with a Champagne reception with Stein. On that Saturday at 12:30pm, the public is welcome to bring a sack lunch or head to the food truck and join an informal picnic lunch with Stein.

WordWave is a literary mash-up that will feature oral storytelling, theater performances and free readings, panels on craft, yoga, and a novel writing camp for kids. Highlights include a one-act playwriting contest, a Maker’s Station demo with bookbinding, letterpress, drum making, and found poetry and art.

Ticketed events include the steampunk ball, workshops, and a hike.

In addition to the free festival on Saturday, WordWave will offer paid workshops on craft and agent sessions; the entire schedule is online.

Old Meyers Grade in the early 1900s. Photo/Lake Tahoe Historical Society

Even in the early 1900s old and new intersected. The above photo shows a horse-drawn carriage and a horseless carriage meeting on the Old Meyers Grade while crossing Echo Summit. This was years before the current Highway 50 Echo Summit route was built in the 1930s.

Meyers Grade as it looks today. Photo/Bill Kingman

Now paved, the Old Meyers Grade still exists. It is mapped as Johnson Pass Road just uphill behind the camera where it traverses the summit.

— Bill Kingman

Wildflowers are still in bloom near Emigrant Lake. Photos/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

KIRKWOOD – Sitting at Emigrant Lake looking up at the granite cliffs that form part of the Kirkwood Mountain Resort boundary it’s easy to understand why the words steep and rugged are synonymous with this ski area.

And this isn’t the super gnarly area of the Wood.

Fortunately, hiking to Emigrant Lake was tame compared to the surroundings.

One of the biggest surprises was discovering how pretty Caples Lake is. I had only seen it from the road and years ago I was on it for an ice fishing story. Several fisherpeople were on the dam, along the shoreline and in boats trying to catch dinner. Crawdads are what they said they were mostly reeling in.

Fishing and boating are popular activities on Caples Lake.

The trail parallels the lake for a ways before it heads into the Mokelumne Wilderness Area.

Then this body of water appears again. It’s a beautiful arm of Caples that isn’t visible from the highway. Water marks on the boulders show the lake is down about 18 inches. The lake is a storage facility for El Dorado Irrigation District for water consumption as well as a hydroelectric plant.

Soon after the lake is behind us the trail begins to climb. It isn’t long before the steep grade levels out to a gradual climb. The hike has an elevation gain of 915 feet.

A variety of flowers are in bloom along Emigrant Creek and in a meadow that the trail wanders through.

Wildflowers – at least last weekend – were still very much in bloom, but clearly beyond their peak. Much of the trail is lush with green foliage.

It seems like with every step there is something for the eyes to feast upon – including a waterfall.

Much of the trail is shaded, which in the middle of a hot summer day was ideal.

Emigrant Creek comes and goes regularly along the trail, making this an ideal hike for dogs with all the lapable water.

Emigrant Lake is an 8-mile round trip hike from the Caples Lake dam.

An old marker points toward the Historic Emigrant Trail. This would have taken us close to Thimble Peak (9,805 feet), Covered Wagon Peak (9,565), Melissa Coray Peak (9,763) as well as to the chairlifts. We chose to go to the lake.

There is also a sign for a trail that leads to Kirkwood Meadow.

Most of the people we see on this Sunday are headed out with backpacks. It’s a popular destination for backpackers. Large, flat boulders near the lake make it an ideal lunch spot for day hikers.

Because the lake sits in a basin, it was a bit windy and cool. But as we got back on the trail to head out it wasn’t long before we shed the layer we had put on at the lake.

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Getting there:

From South Lake Tahoe, go west on Highway 50. Turn left onto Highway 89 in Meyers. At Pickett’s Junction, go right onto Highway 88 toward Kirkwood. Park at the first turnoff on the left after crossing the dam at Caples Lake. The trailhead is to the right of the dam and is well marked.

By Dereck Joubert, National Geographic

In the wake of Cecil the lion’s killing in Zimbabwe we are seeing real conversations about hunting: its viability and its ethics.

It has opened some tough discussions, like if we should all boycott Zimbabwe, or whether lion hunting is in any shape or form a viable conservation tool.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to boycott Zimbabwe. Thousands of local Zimbabweans live off photographic tourism and a range of other jobs that are not involved in hunting. Many of these people have chosen non-hunting industries because they already don’t like the business or ethics of hunting.

Just today I was filming some lions hunting zebras and I reflected on the difference between a hunting lion and a man hunting a lion. Both are undeniably violent acts. But one is necessary, the other is not. One is for food, the other is not. One involves no great celebration of death, one ends in high fives and alcohol celebrations and often some blooding rituals.

Read the whole story

By Ana Swanson, Washington Post

What are your odds of being a millionaire, do you think? One in 10? One in 50? One in 100?

If you’re over 62, your odds of having at least $1 million in net wealth (your total assets minus your total debt) are relatively achievable — about 1 in 7. But if you are under 40, your odds are low: 1 in 55.

In the last 25 years, the odds that an old person is a millionaire have improved slightly. But for young people, they have gotten much worse.

These figures come from a new paper by economists at the St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability, which shows evidence of a growing wealth gap that few people are talking about — the gap between the young and the old.

Read the whole story

Slow Food Lake Tahoe is putting on a canning clinic in Truckee on Aug. 8 from 10am-2pm.

The clinic will cover the basics of water bath canning, which is suitable for preserving all sorts of foods, including pickles, jams and tomato sauce. The clinic will also be touching on additional options of preservation with pressure canning.

The class will be taught by SunMie Won an avid local gardener and expert canner. This is a hand-on workshop with all equipment provided. Participants will take home samples, plus information and tips to get started on canning projects at home.

A simple garden-fresh lunch will also be included.

Tickets are $25, or $15 for Slow Food members. They are available online.

By Teri Sforza, Orange County Register

Within the span of only 11 years, the hole at the bottom of California’s state and local pension funds increased a staggering 3,046 percent.

The monstrous growth of the gap between what public agencies have promised workers upon retirement and what they actually have – from $6.3 billion in 2003 to $198.2 billion in 2013, according to figures gathered by the state controller’s office – matters to all Californians, reformers argue.

If it’s not filled up with meatier investment earnings and heftier contributions from public workers and employers, that hole will continue to expand, and taxpayers must fill it directly.

Why? Because in California, the promises made to public workers on Day One of their employment can never, ever be broken – at least, not outside of federal bankruptcy court. And even in court, officials from Vallejo and Stockton and San Bernardino did not request permission to modify these burdens, fearing they’d have trouble attracting and retaining workers if the city next door offered something better.

Read the whole story

·       Signs recently posted at South Lake Tahoe post offices announcing changes to retail service hours were posted in error, and have since been removed. There are no plans to adjust retail service hours in the Lake Tahoe region at this time.

·       Truckee Department of Public Works road crews will be performing cross country drainage maintenance work in the easements in the Prosser area from Aug. 3-18. Expect delays.

·      Sierra Nevada College has been named one of the 30 Great Small Colleges for Nature Lovers by the website greatvaluecolleges.net

·       Here is a link to El Dorado County’s “most wanted” suspects.

·       South Lake Tahoe is going to spend $255,000 for conceptual designs at the swim complex.