We woke up to rain, not just rain, but RAIN. A typical winter storm hit California today and Folsom being on the foothills of the Sierras meant it would be dumping rain all day. There is also the issue of getting over the Sierras. What is rain down there, is snow up the hill five or six thousand feet... So, Paul and I decided to leave first thing in the morning. Well, not quite first thing, but 7:15am is pretty early. Lots of rain and then ... SNOW!

I made sure before I even arrived in California that Paul had chains, well, cables which are much nicer than chains, and we almost made it, but heading toward Truckee, they had police out checking vehicles. 4 wheel drive and snow tires could pass, all else had to stop and put on their chains. About this point, there are folks along the road, waving you over to their spot where for $20.00 they will put on your chains! Well, we did not want to pay somebody $20.00 to put on cables, but fortunately they were there because as we were putting them on the front tires, the guy yells out, "You're putting them on the wrong tires!" Oops. At least we had not gotten very far.

We must have gone no more than 2 miles before we got to the summit and I decided coffee and maybe a snack at Donner Lake would be nice. Unfortunately the coffee shop, and just about everything else, was closed for the winter. However, we did get the opportunity to take photos during a very nice snow on un snowed ground (it has been very warm and dry here) at the lake. So as Paul and I walked down to the water's edge, look what we found. A beautiful white tiger just laying by the water's edge!

OK, just kidding, but I did take this photo today ;-)

We continued on, not very far, and there was the chain removal people waving us over. Only $10.00 to remove the chains. We pulled over, but pulled them off ourselves. That took oh, about 90 seconds or so to accomplish.... It was a nice spot though to take a few more photos of trees in the snow.

After a quick shopping spree in Reno to pick up a few goodies, like more film, we finally headed up to Animal Ark. They have several new animals there. Most notably two Arctic wolf pups and a white tiger. We only went in with the female Arctic wolf, she was sweet and goofy. Very goofy and loved to kiss endlessly.

Before it got dark we then went down to photograph Khan, their new white tiger. He's 3 years old and pretty friendly. However he recently had an episode with the hotwire and while friendly he was not very happy in that he could not come up and interact with us. At least I think that was his problem however, he sure did pose nicely! I will have to put some of these photos up on their website www.animalark.org!