May 2008

The weather is supposed to again be cold and rainy in the Reno/Tahoe area, so we're tired of being stuck in the truck and trailer and decide to travel to a part of the country where it's warm and dry. We're tired of hearing about the weird (40 degrees colder than last week; and rain in the desert) weather. So we leave the Lake Tahoe area earlier than planned, and then instead of heading north as planned we head west to the warm central valley of California.

We travel across the Sierra Nevada Mountains through the famous Donner Pass. It's cold and rainy at the summit.

We're not really sure where we want to go today. We just know we want to find someplace where the weather is warm and dry enough to enjoy some outdoor activities. We assume that California will have a Welcome Center on Interstate 80 soon after we come into the state so we can decide where to go. Wrong....no Welcome Center. However, they do have an Agriculture Inspection Station. We expect this type of inspection when we travel between Canada and U.S. but not into one of the states.

So they ask us to get out and unlock the trailer for an inspection. The inspector looks around the inside of the trailer, including the fridge, sink and cabinets. Then look in our outside compartments. We think things are going well, but then they tell us that since we're from Pennsylvania we need to pull the trailer over to the side for a gypsy moth inspection. They take about 15 minutes examining all the outside nooks and crannies of our trailer, including taking a flashlight and examining the bottom of the trailer. No gypsy moth eggs. So they give us a paper saying we passed their gypsy moth inspection and let us go on our way.

We get to the central valley of California and it's warm and sunny. Yea! We stop at a nice RV park in Red Bluff and enjoy a nice warm evening. Then around 9pm it starts to rain. Ugh.

It is cold and rainy AGAIN so we have breakfast and decide to drive in our warm truck to Lake Tahoe. We can see that we’re not going to have nice weather to visit Lake Tahoe, so we might as well at least drive around the lake (we were hoping to do some hiking and biking).

As we’re driving south from Reno we decide to make a slight detour and stop at Virginia City, where the Comstock silver lode was discovered/mined. The old town is interesting to walk around.

Joe and I have fun at the one saloon:

We decide to have lunch in Virginia City, but none of the restaurants look very interesting. Years ago (20+) when we were here we remember eating at the Bucket of Blood Saloon, but they no longer serve meals. We end up eating Chinese food in a building that apparently used to be a “house of ill repute”. Yes, we ate lunch in a restored whorehouse. Strange. I was glad that the inside didn’t have any reference to its’ colored past.

On the way to Lake Tahoe we pass through Carson City, the capitol of Nevada. The town seems too small to be a state capitol:

We drive up the mountain to Lake Tahoe. We drive around the lake, but the weather doesn’t really cooperate. When we get to the most picturesque part of the drive it starts to rain/snow.

Oh well. I guess this area is nice in the summer when it’s warm and not raining. However the 2-lane road around this lake that has hundreds and hundreds of homes must be clogged with traffic in summer.

Our drive over the mountain home is snowy,

but once we get near Reno the snow stops. We return to the RV park for dinner and it starts to rain again so we call it a night.

It’s cold and rainy again, so we take our time packing up the trailer. We leave for Reno, Nevada in mid-morning and arrive at the Keystone RV Park in Reno by lunchtime. It’s basically a paved parking lot, but it’s close to downtown and with diesel approaching $5/gallon we are trying to mindful of our driving.

We have lunch and drive down the main street of Reno, keeping an eye out for a movie theatre to see Indiana Jones.

We find the theatre, park the truck and join others in a sold-out showing of the new Indiana Jones movie. The action-packed movie lives up to its hype—we recommend it highly.

We walk around town a little, but it is very cold and drizzly. So we return the warm trailer for the evening.

I wake up to the rat-tat-tat on the roof: it’s snowing again. It stops long enough for Jere and I to take a walk around the campground. It’s really cold, but there are some wildflowers blooming.

We get back to the trailer to start packing up. We have decided it’s too cold and snowy here, so we’re leaving a day early. As we start to pack up, it starts snowing again.

The drive today is long (close to 350 miles). We start out by stopping in Baker, Nevada to get diesel and pick up some bakery items from the town’s deli. The deli is a quirky, interesting little place. There is a strange 'sculpture' with an old vacuum cleaner and brooms hanging from the ceiling. Apparently there's a group of artists in the area who enjoy creating and displaying playful sculptures in the area. We've seen other samples of their work beside the roads around town.

Jere pays $4.75/gallon for diesel. We’re getting awfully close to our dreaded, but expected, $5/gallon level.

We stop at the historic Hotel Nevada for lunch. Another quirky place with lots of interesting wall decorations.

The weather is cold and every time we come to a mountain pass, we hit rain or snow.

We’re driving on Route 50, advertised as The Loneliest Road in America. Most of the drive is through boring deserts, filled with sagebrush.

Every once in awhile we pass something interesting on this otherwise boring drive, including this gate made out of lots and lots of antlers.

We stop at Fallon, Nevada for the night. We use our Passport America Pass again to get a cheap RV site ($13/full hook-ups). The cheap campsite is appreciated – our afternoon diesel fill-up cost $4.90/gallon….ouch!

We drive to Great Basin National Park, Nevada. The scenery along the drive is basically ‘blah’.

When we arrive at the park, we look at the exhibits and watch the movie at the visitor center.

The volunteer on duty suggests that we camp at Baker Campground, which she said is preferred by big rigs.

On the way up the mountain to the campground, it starts to snow. I guess that’s better than the rain we’ve had at times today.

We stop at the entrance to the campground to look at the map. I get out to look at the map and look over and realize that there are 8 buck with furry antlers about 15 feet away, all huddled together and staring at me. Of course the camera is in the truck. I go back to the truck and take a picture of some of them as they run away.

The campground is not really designed for large trailers like ours, and we accidentally scrape against the limb of a tree while we’re looking for a campsite. It breaks the covering to our one vent and causes a little tear on the side of our rubber roof…very frustrating. We set up camp, access the damage to the trailer, cook a nice hot dinner of comfort food, and then head out to explore the park.

As we drive up the Scenic Drive it starts snowing harder, but never really lays on the road.

The snow at the end of the Scenic Drive is several inches deep, so we take a walk about to enjoy the fresh snow and of course Joe & Jere have a snowfight.

We had hoped to take a trail to see a grove of some of the oldest trees on the planet, but all the trails (except one) are closed in the park. Too much snow on the ground. Here’s the trailhead for the grove of old trees.

We drive back to the campground and decide to stay only one night since it’s too cold to do any hiking tomorrow. Our campground is empty, so we hunker down in our warm trailer and keep the generator running til 10pm since no one’s around to complain about the noise.