To Reno and Tahoe

17 - 19 December 2018

In the morning we had a quick breakfast at Mr Mamas and headed north. We made it past Creech, where a Predator drone was on approach for landing. Probably a training flight. We kept heading north and west into ... nothing. Man, did Nevada get screwed. It really makes it clear just how relatively lush the desert in Arizona is. We passed the entrance to Death Valley (another time) and kept going all day through these little dying mining towns in the desert, where the good times were long gone. We cut over to the base of the Sierra Nevadas near Mono Lake, then followed them north. Eventually we got to Garnerville, which I wanted to check out. It was pretty but a little too rural. We then continued on to have dinner in Carson City at Sassafras just after dark. CC was somehow better and worse than I was expecting. After dinner we kept going to Reno, staying at the Atlantis. You know how I feel about gambling subsidized hotels.

Reno is one of the places we had been focussing on for once we landed again. Reno surprised us. It had really grown since we had been through a dozen years before on a road trip. We had breakfast at a Peg's Glorified Ham and Eggs, but one of several now, this one just north of town. When we were here before there was just the one downtown.

We checked out some model homes with views of the mountains. We checked out this one funky old house H had found online, but turns out it was hanging off a cliff, so H said nope. We crossed over the mountain passes. Heather did not like the passes between Reno and Tahoe.

We looked at a Tahoe condo that Heather had been checking out online for some time. It was nice enough, but the best part was the wind whispering through the pines. As we checked out Tahoe further there were some beautiful views of lake we clearly were not going to be able to afford. Despite being beautiful, Tahoe seemed a little too constrained, somehow.

The next night we spent at a Tahoe casino. That night we had dinner at a pizza place in the village, walking over from the NV to the CA side. Lot's of young skiers, and a lot of young families remembering when they were young skiers, and older folks like us remembering when they had young families. After a long time of Reno/Tahoe looking good on paper for a potential landing spot, somehow this visit kind of deflated it.

In the morning we were on our way, the back way, to San Jose to see Madi and Koji.

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