DONNER LAKE

Thursday, October 20, 2011 (2 hours)

This week I was able to visit Donner Lake in California and the Donner Museum.  I have always been intrigued by the story of the Donner party since my Dad told me about it when I was a little girl.  The museum had a video about the Donner party I think it was from the first year there was color film and told the gist of what happened, but it was hard to connect with.  The Museum had a bookstore and I talked to the Park Ranger about which of the books she recommended.  She said the one I was looking at, Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick was a good read with the latest dig findings.  She was right it had lots of information about the area and what it was like to join a wagon train and why anyone would want to uproot their lives and move across the country.  I decided to give my Dad the book as a souvenir so I read as much of it as I could before I gave it to him (also knowing I could borrow it when he was finished). 

Flying home was a bunch of hurry up and wait so when I was flying I read my books and when I was in more of the hurry up and wait mode I caught up on my magazines.  I still had a People magazine to catch up on from the previous week with the main story being about Amanda Knox.