More lessons...

Important lesson for yesterday -- make sure the windshield has been well-scrubbed before heading back out onto the highway, otherwise my little Sony focuses on the bug splatters, rather than the scenery. Unfortunately, we lost some neat photos of signs you'd only see in Nevada, thanks to the autoblur feature on the windshield.

The trip from Winnemucca to Reno was very uneventful. We travelled on I-80 and there were no winding roads or major holdups due to construction. Well, there was some construction, but the 'work zone' speed limit was still 55 mph!!! Zoom, zoom! Not sure *I'd* want to be some of those guys working on paving crews -- never mind the 99F heat!

The Nevada desert is beautiful in its own way, much as the rolling prairie is at home, or the mountains are in Banff. Some of the colours in the mountains, or hills, the stretches of salt flats (alkali?)...it's all a wonder (and I'd be able to share more of it with you, were it not for a focus on bug guts...*sigh*).

Reno is built in a valley, so it's not a city you can see for miles before you get here. You come around a big bend in the road and there it is. What stands out immediately are the major hotels in the downtown area. Not as many as in Vegas, but it seems like some of them are almost as big as those in that larger city.

We took I-80 through the city, and my big discovery was an IHOP just off Exit 10, on N McCarran Blvd. IHOP is one of my favourite brekkie places (but nothing touches Cora, or the Chuckwagon in Turner Valley!), and we have to eat at one at least once before going home!

As we continued out the west side of the city, there were trees! Evergreens!!! The landscape change in such a short distance is amazing. Look behind you, and it's desert; look ahead, and it's beginning to look like mountains at home, covered in pine or spruce. We were glad to see the trees, as we figured it might mean it would be a wee bit cooler than in the city in the middle of the desert! A few minutes later, we were pulling off I-80 at Exit 2 into Terrible's Gold Ranch Casino & RV Park. There's a small casino, a restaurant, a Jack-in-the-Box, and it's right off the highway. There aren't a lot of trees for shade, but it's pretty, and the place seems well-laid out.

After getting set up (we've got this down to about 20 minutes or so for the whole thing), we scouted out some groceries and Gerry contacted a buddy he met on a message board. His friend wanted to take us out for dinner, so he drove out after work and took us back into Reno to a restaurant called Ruby River, a steakhouse, very much in the Western style. We all had steak. Gerry and his friend had a 'jacketed' cinnamon yam, which was delicious. I had a 'jacketed' baked potato. The 'jacket' is almost like a batter you'd find on fish or something like that. I didn't eat the jacket, because my caloric intake was already through the roof, but the little taste I had was good. The steaks themselves were wonderful. Soooo...if you're ever in any of the locations on their website, and you like steak, check it out!

We came back to our campsite, and the guys visited for awhile longer, while I snuggled up with a cup of tea. I'd been missing tea in the evenings, and it was good to have some again.

Today we're going to do some shopping -- there's a big shopping center called The Summit at the south end of the city. Later, we'll check out the casinos downtown. The lady at the reception desk at the RV park said things are really slow in Reno this summer, thanks to the economy, so we should have no trouble finding parking. While it's sad to see the local economy (all of Nevada, from what I understand) struggling so much, I'm glad not to be fighting crowds.