Reno and Carson City

Wednesday, Sept. 22 – Carson City

Off to Reno, Lake Tahoe and Carson City

From Quincey we continued to head East.  Eventually we left the tall tree country and were suddenly confronted with semi-arid desert and almost no trees.  This is the land of Reno.  We stopped in Reno for a few hours.  It is actually not a bad looking town.  It is bigger than I thought with a beautiful university campus and the north end of town.  In the heart of  the city are a few big casino’s such as Circus Circus.  The nice thing about Reno is that the casinos are easy to get to, with the “strip” not being that long, whereas in Las Vegas you can walk for several hours along the main boulevard before you pass the last casino.  Reno is much more user friendly, where you can easily get from the casino area to the restaurant area and the shopping area.

From Reno, we drove to Lake Tahoe.  The  lake itself is an enormous crater from an extinct volcanoe.  It is a fairly large lake (seemed about 10 miles or more long/across).  The drive around it is very scenic with large trees, and a winding road that basically follows the perimeter of the lake.  In one place the road follows a “spine” along the edge of the lake. 

 The road is so narrow that they have no room for protective curbing, and the drop on both sides of the narrow strip of pavement is several hundred feet or more.  Ade was definitely a little nervous on this section.

As we made our way to Carson City (state capital) we passed at least 300 Harley Davidsons heading north in groups of between 4 and 8.  It was quite a site.  Also, going north was a large group of beautifully restored Model A Fords.  It was amazing!  There must have been at least 75 of them. 

 We got a couple of great pictures as they chugged by us in the opposite direction.

Since we hit California, the weather has been perfect.  Rarely a cloud in the sky.  At Carson City (which is located at the north end of the Carson valley, a beautiful strip of agriculture land about 50 miles long), we found a nice RV campsite right across the street from a small/medium size casino at the south end of town (and Carson City strikes me as another very nice place to visit for a day or two).  We went to dinner at the casino, and spent a few schekles on the slot and rollet machines—of course the machines teased us by letting us win at first and then stripping us of our winnings shortly afterwards.