Reno, the Lake or Truckee: Where to Base Your Trip

People agonise over the house and decide the area in ten minutes, which is the wrong way round. The house is four walls you will like. The area decides how much of your week you spend in the car, what you can walk to at nine in the evening, and what happens to the plan when it snows.

Start with what the trip is actually for

One question settles most of it. If the point of the trip is the lake, stay at the lake. The drive up is pleasant the first time and a chore by the fourth, and in winter it is not always available. If the lake is one or two days out of a longer visit that also involves the airport, restaurants and a bit of city, basing yourself in the valley usually gives you more house and less driving overall.

Everything below is the detail under that. It is the same conversation we have on the phone most weeks, and we would rather you had it before you book than after.

Reno and Sparks: more house, more driving

Reno sits at roughly 4,500 feet in the high desert, and the altitude explains the place. Summers are dry and bright, hot in the afternoon and cool by evening. Winter snow on the valley floor usually comes and goes inside a few days, while the Sierra half an hour west keeps it for months. That gap is the whole argument for staying here: you get the mountains without living in them.

Our homes here are houses, most with a yard and a garage, in ordinary residential neighborhoods rather than anywhere near a casino floor. For a group that wants to cook, spread out and park two cars, that is usually more room for the money than the lake offers. The airport sits inside the city limits, so an early flight does not mean a pre-dawn drive, and a supermarket is never far, which matters more on day five than any view does on day one.

The cost is the commute. Incline Village and the north shore are up the Mt. Rose Highway, generally under an hour from south Reno in good weather, with Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe on the way. Read in good weather as a real condition rather than a throwaway: the same road takes chain controls during storms.

Incline Village: in the trees, on the Nevada shore

Incline sits at about 6,300 feet on the north-east corner of the lake, with Crystal Bay and the state line a few minutes west. It reads as a residential community rather than a resort town: quiet streets under the pines, a couple of small centres for coffee and groceries, and the water at the bottom of the hill. If your picture of the trip is waking up in the forest and being at the lake in ten minutes on foot or by bike, this is the one.

Diamond Peak, the community’s own ski area, is inside the village, and Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe is a short drive up the highway. In summer the Tahoe East Shore Trail runs from the edge of the village south to Sand Harbor, paved the whole way, and it is the best three miles of walking on the lake.

One thing to get right before you book. Incline’s own beaches are private to the community, run by the local district for property owners and their guests, so whether a particular home carries that access is a question to ask us rather than assume. Sand Harbor, the state park beach a few miles south, is open to everyone, but its car park fills early and the park has used a reservation system on busy days, so check its site before you drive down.

The rest of the lake, and Truckee

The lake is big enough that the shore you pick is the trip you get.

• The North Shore (Incline Village, Crystal Bay, Kings Beach, Tahoe City) is the easy-going side. Public beaches at Kings Beach and Commons Beach in Tahoe City, the Truckee River leaving the lake at the Tahoe City dam, and Northstar and Palisades Tahoe within a short drive.
• The West Shore (Homewood, Tahoma) is the quiet side. Sugar Pine Point State Park’s beach and trails are at hand and Emerald Bay is further south. Pick this if the words you want are “nothing much happened today”.
• Truckee is not on the lake at all, and that is the point. A historic downtown along Donner Pass Road, Donner Lake for swimming and paddling, the Donner Summit resorts one way and Northstar a short drive down Highway 267 the other. It is a town with its own life in the evening rather than a shoreline that empties at dusk.

What winter does to the decision

Winter is where the choice stops being about taste. Staying at the lake means you are already there when the road closes, which is either the best or the worst thing about it depending on how the week is going. Staying in the valley means the mountains are a drive you might not be able to make that morning.

Read each home’s page for its parking and fireplace details before you commit to a January week. Those are the details that decide a snow trip, and they are on the page for a reason.

What summer does to it

Summer inverts the problem. The roads are open and the constraint becomes parking: the popular beach car parks fill by mid-morning at weekends. That makes the homes you can walk or cycle from worth more in July than they are in any other month, and it is the strongest argument for staying on the shore rather than driving to it.

The rest of it is the bike path along the West Shore from Tahoe City to Sugar Pine Point, rafting the Truckee River from Tahoe City down to River Ranch, and long evenings on a deck. None of that requires a plan.

Three things that decide it more than the view

1. How many of you there are: The sleeping capacity on a home page is the occupancy its county or town permit allows, not a soft suggestion, and the booking site will not take a larger party. Children count. Two families travelling together should look at the larger homes or book two, and should do it early.
2. What you are driving: Between November and April this decides which areas are realistically open to you. A vehicle that cannot handle a chain control is a vehicle that spends the storm parked.
3. Whether a dog is coming: Some homes welcome pets and some do not; each home page says which under its amenities. Where dogs are welcome, the bear rules still apply: trash in the bear-resistant bin, doors closed, food out of the car.

Where to look

Each area has a page written for someone deciding where to sleep: Reno and Sparks, Incline Village and Lake Tahoe and Truckee. Every home Duvoire manages is on the rentals page, one page each, with its town, its sleeping capacity and its amenities. If you are weighing booking here against a platform, that comparison has its own guide.

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