The Gatekeeper's Museum in Tahoe City takes its name literally. It once housed the person whose job was minding the floodgates of the Tahoe Dam, the modest structure that controls how much of Lake Tahoe's water escapes into the Truckee River. These days the North Tahoe Historical Society runs the place instead, filling it with placards charting the town's transformation from lumber camp to lakeside resort.

A short stroll away sits Fanny Bridge, so named for the view it offers passing drivers: visitors lean over the rail to watch trout in the water below, exposing their rear ends in the process. Counting fannies as you cross is, apparently, a local tradition.

VoiceMap's self-guided driving tours use the museum's parking lot as their starting point for three separate routes around the lake, including one that follows Virginia Reed Murphy's own account of the Donner Party's ill-fated crossing of the Sierra Nevada.