California's Secluded Mountain Town Is A Gateway To Echo Lake And Tahoe With Cozy Comforts

As well as boasting some of the most breathtaking road trips along the West Coast, and more surf-washed beach towns than you could need for a single vacation, California also offers stacks of incredibly cozy mountain getaways. The state has over 8,000 named peaks, which come peppered with such lovely places as the high-desert adventure hub of Bishop, and the history-brimming Gold Rush settlements of the Sierra Nevada. There's also Meyers, California, an under-the-radar town that's a fine stepping stone to glimmering lakes and soaring granite mountains.

You'll find Meyers straddling the main route of Highway 50 as it weaves through the Sierra Nevada from Lake Tahoe (more on that later) to the soaring pass of Echo Summit, a scenic high point that's over 7,370 feet above sea level. A one-time stop on the Pony Express route that brought mail and messages from east to west in the 19th century, Meyers is now more of an unashamed base for skiing by winter and hiking by summer; a place to whiz down the Tahoe pistes, or hit the trails around Echo Lake.

The Reno-Tahoe International Airport is the main aviation hub serving this corner of the California mountains. It's actually across the border in Nevada, but the drive from the arrival hall to Meyers should only be a little over an hour along Interstate 580 and then Highway 50. It's also under two hours' drive to Meyers from Sacramento's major airport, going via the unsung mountainous playground of Pollock Pines — quick pitstop for a lake swim, anyone?

Meyers has a location that's just about perfect if you're looking to sample all the outdoorsy goodness offered by the High Sierra Nevada. Perhaps most enticingly of all, the south shores of Tahoe are just a whisker over 10 minutes' drive up the road. In fact, Meyers is sometimes listed as a neighborhood of California's lakeside paradise of South Lake Tahoe, or SLT for short. That's an adventure playground extraordinaire, touting 4,800 acres of skiable terrain at the Heavenly Mountain Resort alongside hikes around beautiful Emerald Bay.

In the other direction, around a 15-minute drive further along Highway 50, there's a gateway to yet another ultra-gorgeous alpine lake. This time it's Echo Lake, which sits amid the granite peaks of the breathtaking Desolation Wilderness. You will need a permit to hike up there, but it's an epic section of the Pacific Crest Trail that involves a water taxi to a distant chalet in the mountains.

And then there's Fallen Leaf Lake. It's hidden midway between Echo Lake and the banks of Tahoe. Usually, you'd drive along Highway 89 and the Fallen Leaf Road to access its popular summer trails and boating marinas, but there are also hiking paths that can whisk you over a ridge and straight in from the northwestern suburbs of Meyers town itself.

Meyers is more than just a basecamp for getting out and about in Tahoe and the Echo Lake trails. It's also a lovable mountain community in its own right. The global neighborhood networking app Nextdoor — used by millions of people across hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide — gives Meyers a perfect friendliness score of 100! What's more, the population in Meyers has shot up in the past few years, indicating that perhaps more and more folks are looking for their slice of that cozy Sierra Nevada lifestyle.

You'll find taste-bud-tingling places to dine here, too; comfort for the belly, if you will. Take Pretty Odd Wieners. These purveyors of gourmet hot dogs do their trade from a parking lot just off Highway 50. It's garnered them 5 out of 5 on TripAdvisor at the time of writing, where one former patron writes: "Do yourself a favor a [sic] grab a Sonoran dog. You won't be sorry. Skip the fancy, overpriced restaurants and get some good food."

A stone's throw along the 50 from that is the Getaway Café. They're champions of "alpine comfort cuisine," which comes in the form of vegan breakfast tacos, cobb salads, and spicy Cajun chicken breasts — perfect post-hike, post-ski dining.