6/15/2017 - Cattle Drive and Rodeo

Thursday - We are certainly enjoying the nice weather in Reno, especially when we see Phoenix's weather.  Although it's warmed up a little every day since we got here, we are still just getting to around 90 degrees.  Today we decided to keep the morning free, our first activity was to locate the arrival of the cattle drive over by the rodeo grounds, which was scheduled for noon.  So I took advantage of the free time and did our laundry, which took a little longer than it should have because I had a "blonde moment."  They have those stacked dryers, and I put my money in the bottom one but put my load of laundry in the top one.  The first stack I used both, so that worked ok, but when I went to check on progress, I found that my one load wasn't spinning, but I only had 23 minutes left to run.  I went over to the office and told her my dryer had stopped.  She said if there was an empty one, just switch my load and she would reimburse me.  So when I went back to do that, I realized the bottom dryer was spinning empty.  I figured out my mistake, switched the load and added more money, and went back to the office and told her it was "operator error."  So I finally got that chore done.  I warned David so he wouldn't make the same mistake because they did laundry in the afternoon.  (I have a feeling he would have figured it out to start with, but I guess I didn't pay attention to the arrows by the change box.)

Anyhow, we got that taken care and set off to find the cattle drive.  Joe is an excellent chauffeur, he is getting more familiar with the GPS in the car, and he makes his own route sometimes, especially here where they have a lot of streets closed for the rodeo event.  We ended up with a great parking spot, and a place to set our lawn chairs in the shade, right next to the sidewalk.  We had about an hour's wait (those silly cattle were LATE!!), but it was fun to watch.  There were lots of people lining the streets.  One woman rolled down her car window and asked us what everyone was waiting for.

 Finally, after the cops and sheriffs got the traffic off this street, here they came.

I was juggling my cell phone and my camera, and I dropped the phone and it almost went down the storm drain.  The cowboy riding by told me I was lucky, and I totally agreed!

Fortunately, the street sweepers followed the cattle and took care of that business.

From there, we made the short drive to the Fleischmann Planetarium on the University of Nevada-Reno campus.  Here we watched a couple of films and then checked out the exhibits.  I thought there would be an observatory but there wasn't.

Their exhibits were a lot about the planets and about pieces of meteors that had been found around the country, especially around Odessa, Texas and in Nevada.

They had an exhibit of the space station too.

We left there and headed back to the campground, which was a surprisingly short distance.  Joe and I located a nearby post office so I could mail a package to Florida, then we kicked back for a while, until it was time for the Main Event, the Extreme Bull competition.  We arrived about an hour early, which allowed us time to walk through some of the merchandise barns.  Lots of neat cowboy stuff, but pretty steep price tags on most of it.

Mazie surprised us by being a real fan of bull riding, and this was a great competition.  Our seats were right above the cattle corrals (not the bulls), but we assume these were the cattle we saw brought into town at noon.

They did the full official opening ceremony, and the drill team came through with their flags.

We saw a lot of full 8-second rides, but we also saw a lot of very short ones.  It was fun.

And one of the most exciting things, one of my very favorite things -- the Clydesdales arrived!!!!!

The clown's barrel in the center of the grounds had Coors Light on it, and those Budweiser horses ran right over it, which Joe said he knew they would do.  Had I expected that, I would have tried to get a picture of them taking it out!

Back to the bull riding, the competition continued.  We couldn't understand the announcer very well and couldn't see the names of the riders, so we didn't keep up with the standings.  Here's one that didn't make the full ride.

We saw a few riders helped off the grounds, but no emergency vehicles were called in, and it didn't appear that anyone got seriously injured, which seems to me to be a very likely outcome.

Then we had the Mutton Bustin' which is always fun to watch.  One little girl won first place in this. Most of the kids barely got out of the chute, but some made it a few steps. This one didn't last very long.

 But this one got in a little bit of a ride.

We had a drone overhead too.

It was a fun evening. Pro rodeo's top 40 bull riders competed for a $40,000 purse.  It was over about 9:30, and we were ready to get off those bleachers!  We are going back Friday night for the first night of the Rodeo, which should also be a good time. 

6/14/2017 - From Carson City to Reno

Wednesday - Time to move on, even though we only "moved on" 35 miles, to Reno.  Joe and I did a little shopping this morning before we left Carson City, and Dave and Mazie made a trip back to the bakery we located yesterday (same one as in Bishop).  We didn't leave Carson City until 11:50, after Dave filled up with propane and we all got hooked up.

We saw a few interesting sights along the way, but I didn't get pictures of everything.  There were silhouettes of deer beside the freeway right after we got on (580), but I didn't have the camera ready.  I always get excited when I see the Belgium Belted Cows (aka the Oreo Cookie Cow), and we passed a small herd of them.  I was ready this time, and got a couple of pictures -- not great, but better than nothing.

This next picture I found on the computer because I zoomed the camera in before I found the prospector in the viewfinder and never did find him.  Joe couldn't see him at all because he was down in the valley a little bit.  I was glad I came up with a picture, he was pretty cool.
 

 It was only a 40-minute drive, and we got to our Reno campground at 12:30.  The Reno Rodeo comes to town tomorrow, so after we got situated and had some lunch, we drove out to the Livestock  Event Center and got tickets for the Extreme Bull Riding Thursday night, and the Rodeo itself for Friday night.  The cattle drive arrives here tomorrow around noon, so we are going to try to see that. We came back to camp and
played cards for a while -- our long drive today had worn us all out. But we decided to go out for a steak dinner tonight, so Joe found an Outback and that's where we ate.

We are camped right on the Truckee River, and it is running hard.  After we got back to camp after our big dinner, we walked down to check out the river.  We didn't think we needed to get our fishing poles out.

Joe found the horseshoe pit down here so he gathered up the shoes and tried his hand at pitching them (he didn't do very well).  I then took my turn, and I thought I did a little better than he did.  The photo was shooting into the sun, so it's not too good either.

So tomorrow we begin our exploration of Reno.  We will see what we can find of interest here.  And then we will go watch the bulls.  It's warming up, it was 54 when I got up this morning, and it was in the 80s here this afternoon.  I see Phoenix is forecast for 120 next Tuesday, so we are very thankful to be missing out on that.

6/13/2017 - More Museums and Lake Tahoe

Tuesday - Today was a busy day.  My thermometer said 44 this morning, and I could see some frost on the roofs of the cars around us.  We left the RVs about 8:15, had a great breakfast at Heidi's, then headed to the Nevada State Museum, which houses the old Historic Carson City Mint.  This building has been added on to since our visit here 25 years ago, but we walked through the museum part, which included an underground mine, and the old Mint and lots of coins on display. There was a lovely silver service on display, from the USS Nevada, but my picture didn't turn out real good.

 From there, we walked to the State Capitol.   This building was completed in 1871, and although it has been remodeled over the years, it is still a working Capitol.  The Governor's office is here, as well as the offices of the other state officials.  The Senate and Assembly moved to another building in 1971, which was remodeled and enlarged between 1996 and 1997.  Nevada is one of only three states in which the legislature is separate from the Capitol.  We stepped into the Lieutenant Governor's office because he wasn't in, but the Guard told us that the Governor was busy signing new laws so we didn't go in there.  They were working on the very beautiful grounds here, getting ready to lay some sod.

 Joe was intrigued by some of these enormous trees, which he thinks were elm trees.  Many of the trees had plaques in the ground identifying them, but we couldn't find that particular plaque.

From there we headed to Lake Tahoe, and Joe drove us around the entire lake so we got lots of beautiful views.  We stopped in South Lake Tahoe at one of the beaches/marinas so we could get some pictures.

 The snow on the mountains behind the lake make this really picture-perfect.

We had a quick lunch at McDonalds, then drove on around the California side to a Vista Point overlooking Emerald Bay.  When Joe and I were here 25 years ago, we took a cruise on the lake and got to see this area up close.  On that trip, we also hired a fishing charter and caught a few kokanee salmon. 

A few miles further along, we came upon a bicycle accident.  We don't know if the rider was hit by a car or something else happened, but the person was laid out on the side of the highway and we met emergency vehicles further on.  Of course, there was road construction along here too, so that made traffic a mess.  We passed a few bikers on this narrow road, and there was no bike path, so it definitely was a dangerous place to ride.

As we came across the north end of the lake, we made a pit stop and Mazie and I got to put our toes in the water.  The water was crystal clear, and not as cold as we expected, although we were were only in a few inches of water.

 Putting our shoes and socks back on.  We never remember to take a towel with us.

We completed the circle, with lots of breath-taking views of this lake.  Dave and Mazie stopped at Lake Tahoe back in the 60's but they didn't get to see this much of it.

We got back into Carson City about 5:00, made for a pretty long day.  Joe took me to the Nugget casino for an hour, but it wasn't a very nice casino.  I made a little (about $30) but Joe said I had to cover his losses, so I'm not sure how we came out.  We are leaving here tomorrow, heading to Reno.  We feel like to covered this area fairly well.

6/12/2017 - Chilly in Carson City, NV

Monday - It rained off and on during the night, and I got up to a chilly 42 degrees.  We did put an extra blanket on the bed.  There is fresh snow on the mountaintops.  And I decided to make chili today!  We didn't get an early start, maybe 9:30, but we decided to check out the visitor center, which was next to the Railroad Museum.  We picked up maps and brochures, then toured the Railroad Museum.  We've seen several railroad museums, but we decided to walk through this one too.

 Mazie was interested in this 3-wheel bicycle for a railroad track.

Joe thought we should all take a ride on the railroad hand cart, so that was our next adventure, after we toured through the train car.

 Joe had to tell Mazie to slow down so she didn't run us off the track.

After that, we made the 15-mile drive to Virginia City.  It was such a chilly day that we weren't into too much outdoor activity.  We drove up and down all the streets in this town (Joe never sees a road that doesn't have his name on it), and we got a good overview of the town.  We finally found a parking spot right on the main street so we had lunch at the Palace.

We walked a few of the shops next to the restaurant, but it had gotten windy and cooler again, so we didn't spend much time doing that.

They did have a rock shop with absolutely beautiful rocks.  Most of them had a pretty good price tag on them.

On our way back to town, we passed a wild horse crossing sign, and shortly thereafter, David spotted two horses!  So we stopped and took pictures, but they were not very close to the road so the pictures aren't the best.  We also saw a jackrabbit in town, that was our wildlife for the day.

We got back to the campground about 3:00 and rested from our busy day, then we got together and played cards.  And Joe and I had chili for dinner.  They have predicted a low of 38 tonight, but a high in the 70s tomorrow, so we are hoping to drive to Lake Tahoe. 

2017-6-11 On to Carson City, Nevada

Sunday - Mazie wanted to go back to the bakery for breakfast so that's how we started our morning.  Again, Joe and I split a breakfast sandwich, and a pastry.  And I didn't buy anything else.  So we got out of town only buying 2 pastries (not to mention the free samples, but they don't count).  Mazie stocked up a little, though.  It was 52 degrees when we got up this morning.  We de-camped, with Joe resuming his normal RV activity of washing the windshield.  We ran into a swarm of bees or bugs the other day, and he said they were like glue on the windshield.  He worked on it for 20-30 minutes, and he said he worked up a sweat.

We fueled at the edge of town ($3.099, it went up 10 cents overnight), then we were on our way, at 9:45.  Up Hwy 395 all day, up and down the mountains, always in sight of some snow, and the wind slammed into us all day long.  We saw clouds forming ahead of us, and sure enough, we ran into some light rain.  Then some snow.

We passed several pretty mountain lakes today, the first large one was Mono Lake.

We stopped for a lunch break at Bridgeport. Gas here was $4.39

The clouds were pretty threatening, and before too long, we were driving through snow flurries.  Joe jokingly had asked Mazie when we started out this morning if she thought it would snow.  We were quite surprised when it did.  We were above 8,000 feet by now.  Joe finally turned the heater on, under protest, but it got down to 42 degrees.  It was pretty foggy in the mountains but the highway stayed clear, and none of the snow stuck.

We drove next to this raging river or creek for many miles.  The snow melt must be pouring off these mountains because this was no babbling brook. 


As we neared the California/Nevada border, we came upon another large, pretty lake, Topaz Lake. We assume our rushing river dumps into this lake, it looked like it was full.

We crossed the Nevada State Line at 12:52, and shortly after that we came upon a large burn-out area.  Looked like it had been a few years ago, but not much recovery.

As we came through Gardnerville, we noticed the price of gas had dropped to $2.61.  We drove on to our campground in Carson City, arriving about 2:15.  The sun was shining, but it was really windy, as it had been all day.  It was 66 degrees when we stopped for the day.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will do some exploring around Carson City and maybe Virginia City.  Weather forecast for tonight is a low of 44, but tomorrow's high is only predicted for 58 and tomorrow night's low is supposed to be 36.  I'm going to dig out another blanket tonight, and we will need to turn the furnace on instead of the air conditioning.  Seems like it is always either too hot or too cold!