Spiritual Retreat at Lake Tahoe Zephyr Point

Over Veteran’s Day weekend this year, I went with a small group from my church to the beautiful Zephyr Point conference grounds that sit right at the shores of Lake Tahoe. I will mainly be sharing the photos from that trip, along with some commentary.

We first gathered mid-afternoon to arrange carpool rides from the city to Lake Tahoe. Traffic was not ideal going up there, so we stopped in another big city for dinner before reaching the conference grounds around 8:30 pm. It was quite dark by then, but we got to see a lot of stars in the clear night sky – plus Jupiter and part of the Milky Way.

There were enough rooms in the lodge for everyone to have their own room, so that was really nice. I originally chose a room facing the east (so not facing the lake), but I noticed the blinds were torn and wouldn’t give a lot of privacy. Because of that, I ended up choosing a room that had a window facing the lake (although it was dark at that point, so I couldn’t see anything). I was quite pooped so I tried to go to sleep as soon as I could. It was very cold though and I wish I could have brought my sleeping bag.

This was part of the view of my room when I woke up:

I wish I got a photo of the flight of stairs we had to go down to get to breakfast, but after breakfast before our first morning session, I let myself go on a little photography adventure around the conference grounds:

There was a little bit of snow on the conference grounds:

Then, I finally went onto the piers:

In this photo I took, the rocks were probably 15-20 feet down. The water was very clear:

The little bit of fall scenery I was able to photograph:

Around 9:30 on Saturday, we did about 20 minutes of centering prayer. Basically, we choose a word and then we sit silently for 20 minutes. Whenever we’d notice our thoughts stray, we would have that word in our mind to center us again. I almost fell asleep a handful of times because I did not sleep very well due to the cold.

In our first session, in all honesty, I mainly remember the prayer tree. I appreciated how this graphic acknowledged that prayer is not just words, although it can be. Prayer can be more fully embodied in our lives in various ways, as God is not constrained to just words. One thing that stood out for me from the tree was other cultural practices being included on there:

After that session we had lunch. After lunch, some of us went to Cave Rock, which is only about a 7 minute drive from the conference ground. It was described to us as a hiking trip, but honestly, it was mainly a vista point with some walking and climbing. Here are some of the views I saw there:

When we returned to the conference grounds around 3:00 pm, we had six hours of free time until dinner. I knew the sun was starting to set, but I was also quite tired. So I took a nap first and then walked around and got some golden hour shots while also catching up with Jacob:

We then had dinner and then our last session, in which we did some activities as a form of prayer. I tried to sleep as early as possible again for the last night to try to sleep better, even though I was unsuccessful because it was so cold. I wanted to wake up early to go to the coffee shop that was on the conference grounds for our last day there. I didn’t manage to wake up early on our last day, but I still did get to visit the coffee shop and buy myself a spiced gingerbread latte:

We had our final session reflecting on the weekend, and I basically reflected on how crazy fast and schedule-filled my life has been lately. I am still thinking of ways to find more time to slow down and to seek beauty.

Here are other shots around the conference grounds: