Reno

We passed through Reno midday on Friday, stopping first in Sparks and then in downtown Reno, largely to indulge D's desire to play blackjack at tables with favorable rules (which he had researched carefully). Much to our bemusement, he seems to know what he's doing. I lost money - buying coffee at establishments that don't offer any possibility of winning. M pretty much broke even playing low-stakes video poker. But he walked away having leveraged his small stack of Benjies into a larger one.

Virginia Street was closed to traffic for a big beer festival, so M and I wandered past booths selling crafts, and t-shirts, and food, periodically ducking into casinos to cool off.

There's a lot of construction at the south end of the strip - it looks like maybe there are plans to redevelop the area around the river, which could actually be pretty neat. Though the geologist in me always wonders what a flash flood would look like in one of these urban channels. The other thing that I noticed was that the railroad no longer crosses Virginia at grade - waiting for trains to pass was almost as iconic as the "Biggest Little City in the World" sign.

Elko

We were passing through Elko around dinner time and M's iPhone search for restaurants pointed us to the Star. Which was fun for me, since I'd been introduced to family-style Basque dining in Elko way back in 1980, at the Star (I think the physical location has changed in the interim). It's really best to do with a larger group, because there is simply way too much food, and it's also best to do when you're heading somewhere with a refrigerator, since everyone leaves with a box of leftovers.

The crowded lobby of the Star was lined with posters from past years of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

Elko's changed in some ways since I spent a week flying in and out of here in a helicopter 35 years ago. There's even a Starbucks. Which was good, since I needed something for the late evening drive to Winnemucca.

Wheeler Peak

I suspect that Nevada may have more distinct mountain ranges than any other state - but most are not necessarily very distinguished ones. Some are higher and more extensive and more noteworthy than others. Elevation tends to provide more moisture, more climatic diversity, more snow, and more vegetation.

The Ruby Mountains south of Elko are spectacular. The White Mountains on the California border are the location of the highest point in Nevada, Boundary Peak (13,140'), but it's just a shoulder on the even higher Montgomery Peak across the line in California and isn't quite as significant as a summit in itself.

The highest peak in its own right in Nevada is Wheeler Peak (13,063'), here in the South Snake Range near the eastern edge of the state.

Wheeler Peak was engulfed in rain clouds the evening I drove in. I drove up to the campground at the end of the road, near 10,000', just a couple of hundred feet below the next morning's snow line. I would have lingered if there had been morning sunshine to light up the peaks, but it was socked in and I just headed down the hill to breakfast in Baker.

*In in my hurry to catch up with posts from the trip, I managed to leave this one in the drafts folder. We'll see if I can post it in the proper order, or whether it will end up forever located between Colorado National Monument and Crested Butte.

U.S. 50

US 50 across Nevada is promoted as "The Loneliest Road in America." Which made it pretty much a must do for me. I've actually driven this road before, but it had been a long time, when road trips in desolate places were still novelty and had not yet become nostalgia.

Stokes Castle in Austin

Shoe tree east of Delta

There's not much - in terms of people or water or vegetation - between Carson City, Nevada, and Delta, Utah. Just 470 miles of mountains, desert scrub, and dry lake bottoms. There are towns: Austin, Eureka, Ely, Baker. There are gravel roads heading off to ghost towns and mines. There are remains of Pony Express stations used for a brief season or two in 1860-61 before being rendered irrelevant by the telegraph (the original one of which ran along this route). I love this kind of road, bolstered by air conditioning and my confidence in the reliability of modern automobiles.

Sand Mountain

US 50 runs from California to Maryland (or vice versa?). It is the old Lincoln Highway, at least through California and Nevada (the Lincoln Highway followed US 30 east from Salt Lake City). Originally I considered driving it all the way from Sacramento to St. Louis, then driving north to Minnesota, but decided to mix it up a little. I did take 50 from Lake Tahoe to Colorado and on the return trip we took 50 from Lake Tahoe westward down to Sacramento.

In planning this trip, I had been determined to find a new route from Seattle to Minnesota, or at least one that differed significantly from the routes we've taken across Montana and the Dakotas so many times in the last few years. I guess I wanted to see if I could drive to Minnesota without driving through Missoula or Gillette or Dickinson!

I joked that I was adopting the "repositioning" used by cruise ships and airlines, spending the first day of the trip relocating to California and opening up a whole new series of route options.  We also returned two weeks later from Minnesota (Wisconsin, actually) via San Francisco, doing the same basic thing (different roads) on the way back.

Grimes Point

Just east of Fallon on U.S. 50 (within a few seconds in an F-18 from the Naval Air Station) is Grimes Point. Thousands of years ago, this promontory used to jut out into Lake Lahontan (when it rained more than it evaporated here in the Great Basin, filling up the valleys with large lakes) and native Americans made their camps here on the marshy shorelines and tagged the varnished boulders with abstract designs and images of creatures both real and imaginary.

Sometimes I am amazed that any of these prehistoric sites survived the torments of vandalism and target practice and archeological pilfering, but maybe it says something about just how many of these sites there must have once been that some still remain relatively intact.

Castle Gardens: June 2012

Lake Tahoe

I knew one of the few spots on this trip where I could collect beaches would be Lake Tahoe and I had planned for weeks to spend a long half day circling the lake.  But as always happens, there's rarely enough time to all everything we plan and we never plan adequately for construction, traffic, missing key turns, and spending longer in some places than expected.  As a result, I only managed to work my way along the Nevada side in the time I had, but that was perfectly okay.

I'd seen Tahoe before, and certainly was familiar with its scenic reputation, but I hadn't had a chance to really look.  Between the mountains, the color of the lake, and the rounded granite boulders at the water's edge, it's easy to see why this place attracts folks. Of course, that attractiveness, along with other summer/winter recreation and Nevada's lax gambling regulations, is why the north and south ends of the lake are so built up and congested.

I visited Kings Beach, Sand Harbor, and Nevada Beach. I also got as far south as the Starbucks in South Lake Tahoe before turning around, climbing back over the ridge on Route 50, and heading down the long hill into the desert. I had dinner at Red's 395 Grill in Carson City and found a relatively cheap hotel room in Fallon.

Valley of Fire

Sunday morning we made sure D got breakfast and off to his morning round and then we drove out of town to explore the desert.

I had a bit of a goal in mind - I wanted to find some beaches, even if that required some imagination. So we swung by Lake Las Vegas, and Boulder Beach and Overton Beach on Lake Mead, where M patiently waited while I took pictures (Gravel Beach).

We drove back through the Valley of Fire, us and hundreds of afternoon visitors from the city. From the number of stretch limos we figured the trip up here must be part of the standard Vegas wedding package.

Las Vegas Boulevard

I'm sure that even Vegas's biggest promoters in it's early days would have had trouble foreseeing the intersection of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevard in 2008.

Stratosphere

Once D's round got underway M and I headed off on the monorail for the Stratosphere. It's not as tall as the CN Tower, but this one has rides on top. M probably would have been willing to try them, but I pleaded old age, poor back, vertigo, and bad hair. I told her she could go on her own, but in the end we settled for the elevator and the observation deck.

What a spectacular day! Big, dry desert valley spreading 20 miles between snow covered mountains - filled with a million and a half people. Still doesn't make any sense. You can't see all the For Sale signs from up here.

Las Vegas

M&D flew in from SFO earlier in the afternoon, so by the time I arrived from Seattle that evening D was finishing his first round (he won).

It would be hard to tell the economy was in crisis from the activity on the Strip, though I can't imagine that the folks paying for all those construction cranes across the street at MGM's new CityCenter complex aren't a little nervous.

The city remains appalling, but the mountain desert that surrounds it is still inspiring.