West Wendover, Nevada

Day 2: Driven today: about 475 miles

 

I felt bad dragging the kids away from the beach this morning. I get the feeling they could have stayed there all day, but we had some ground to cover and I knew there'd be plenty of beach time in the weeks to come. We definitely took our time this morning eating breakfast and packing up so it was about noon by the time we left Lake Tahoe. I had called my Aunt Debbie who lives in eastern Nevada, hoping we could stop by and see her on our way through. I was surprised when she asked us if we wanted to stay the night with her. It's been so long since I'd seen her and I knew the girls would love her.

 

Driving through Lake Tahoe and Carson City, Nevada, reminded me why I love road trips. My favorite part of the trip is driving through towns and seeing a glimpse of the lives of the people who live there and feeling the heartbeat of the town that is visible in the decorations, shop names, billboards and businesses that are there. We chuckled at the wedding chapels in Tahoe, the myriad of casinos just outside town, and the small, nearly deserted towns just over the Nevada border. We wondered about the origins of street names, read local advertisements, and of course amused ourselves with lots of silly signs and posted warnings. Carson City was full of amazing carved metal sculptures that were a lot of fun to look at, and a little while later we stopped in Fernley, Nevada for a bit of ice cream (it was 80 degrees in that Nevada desertland!) and yet another sleeping bag in Walmart (this time we had a broken zipper).

 

 

Then, for nearly the rest of the day, this is what we saw:

 

 

Until we hit Elko, NV, this is literally all we saw. For probably 5 hours we drove through flat desert wasteland, with only a few houses and power plants, although there were a surprising number of prisons out there. We passed a few towns, but mostly lots and lots of this.

 

Finally, near Elko, we were greeted by a beautiful snowy mountain range looming up ahead of us, followed by a stunning glowing sunset behind us, and then topped off with an enormous full moon straight ahead of us. It was defnitely worth the wait.

 

I felt a little bad pulling into West Wendover so late, especially when I got to her house and realized that she was 10 minutes over the time zone change and it was an hour later than I even thought, but she made us feel so at home and I was so glad to be able to have the chance to visit with her. It turns out that she also has two very chubby cats in her home that my girls were instantly enamored with. They were so excited to sleep on her floor hoping to get a midnight companion cozying up with them.

 

We had some cinnamon apples and chocolate mayonnaise cake (who knew?!) along with some silly conversation, and then we finally settled down to get some sleep. I'm glad that we will still have some more time to visit in the morning before we head out for another day of adventures.