Thursday
Hello!
When one gets out of the habit of blogging, one sometimes
forgets the little things – like to take pictures along the way to accompany
the words! After all, the photos are
usually the best part! So … I took some
photos of our wonderful LV hotel last night, and then a great many as we were
driving today. But first …
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| Finally some Cottonwoods! |
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| Beautiful mountains! |
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| Walker (Salt) Lake near Hawthorne |
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| Walker Lake at a very low level |
Up this morning around 6, and after a really lovely soak in
our HUGE bathtub, we were on our way.
(Note: I’ve never seen a tub that
didn’t have a faucet before! In this case,
when you turned on the hot and cold taps, water of appropriate temperature came
out of six places around the base of the tub!
Not wanting to waste too much water, I filled it part way, and sank into
a lovely bath … only to realize that with no faucet, I’d have to go into the
shower just to wash my hair! Crazy! I’ve never seen anything like it! However, the shower was unoccupied, and I was
able to wash my hair … just left a trail of water from one room (our bedroom)
to the other (the bathroom). We checked
out of the hotel, loaded everything up, and headed to the strip to a Denny’s for breakfast. We both had hash browns and ham, and it was
perfect! Then on the road.
Today was mostly all on highway 95, which heads northwest
out of Vegas and winds its way to Reno … eventually! We were both so surprised to see how far to
the northwest Vegas has grown! Lots of
lovely and large housing areas along the way – then suddenly, we were out of
town! As R says, where did the traffic
go?
The scenery was good almost the entire way up north. Lots of desert plants at first, then working
up to cottonwood trees, and finally into Reno, which is near Lake Tahoe and
lots of ski areas. We passed Creech Air
Force Base (of which I have NEVER
heard) and actually saw two drones in the sky!
R figures they could be a drone base or a drone training base, but
whatever, they look very odd staying still in the sky, that’s for sure.
We went through a handful of very, very depressing and dying
towns with buildings boarded up and houses literally falling down. Tonapah was okay, and we stopped for lunch in
Hawthorne – at Maggie’s Once More. Hawthorne, it turns out, has an Army ordnance
center which brings a lot of business into town, and was therefore much more
prosperous looking. Maggie’s was full, actually – R had a Greek Salad and I had their
Chef’s Salad with ranch dressing. Both
were excellent. Sure wish I could find a
Chef’s Salad like that somewhere around Tucson!
From Hawthorne we headed to Fallon. Tom, my younger older brother was stationed
at Fallon’s Naval Air Facility for several years when he was in the Navy. Fallon, like Hawthorne, has the base to rely
on, and I was interested in seeing where my brother had spent some of his
time! I do remember hearing that he was
very close to the Ponderosa – and being at the time an avid watcher of “Bonanza”
I was thrilled that someone in MY
family actually had been there! Way to
go, Brother!
From Fallon we actually got on the I-80 Freeway for a bit,
before actually running into Reno and a traffic jam. Decided to get off the freeway, and spent the
next 20 minutes heading south to get to our hotel, a Hilton Garden Inn. We finally got here around 4 pm (all told, it
took 9 hours to get here, but at least an hour of that was spent with breakfast
and lunch, so not too bad!) We’re in
room 515, which is a lovely and HUGE
suite! (Yeah, Diamond status!) With two
bathrooms! We have another enormous tub
in the main bathroom, which actually has a faucet but no jets. As I have never been a jet-kinda gal, that is
great with me, as I’ve always found they tend to get inconveniently in the
way.
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| Made it to Fallon, Nevada! |
R set up the computer while I got us organized, and then
about 5:30 pm we headed out to dinner.
Just a very short distance away we found Great Full restaurant, which was a very interesting place! Very casual atmosphere, but very nice. They have all sorts of foods – gluten free,
vegan, vegetarian – or regular. You sit
down at a table which already has a bottle of magnesium-infused flat water on
it, and go from there.
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| Driving through Fallon |
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| Railroad bridge outside of Fallon |
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| Truckee River! |
As we were within the 3 – 6 pm happy hour range, we both
ordered appetizers, which were half priced.
Out came a HUGE plate of
heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella and balsamic vinegar and basil, and R’s
appetizer, stuffed “shrooms.” These
turned out to be two humungous Portobello mushrooms (each about 5 inches in
diameter) stuffed with something vegetarian and cheese. Had we realized how big the appetizers were,
we would literally have stopped right there!
But this was followed by a salad for me and a great tomato soup for
R. For mains (yes, more food!) I had
their chicken picatta – which came as one complete breast with potatoes and
veggies, and R had their salmon. R was
able to finish his salmon, but I brought back one entire half of the chicken
breast. I’m thinking we can picnic on
all our leftovers tomorrow on our way to Bend!
From the restaurant, we went to the local Smith’s grocery
store, which had the Arrowhead lemon sparkling water that we like, as well as
some ice for the ice chest. I also made
a quick trip into a frozen yogurt shop for a small helping of salted caramel
and cake batter – yum, and a great way to end the evening!
Back to the hotel around 7:45 pm and now to try and launch
the blog!
More tomorrow, as we head to Bend, Oregon!
Lots of love,
m
xxx
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