730 Miles

It was nice to open the curtains Tuesday morning after several days of heavy cloud cover, wind, then rain and snow the last 128 miles into Standish on Monday..... to no rain.....few clouds......warm sun shinning in the windows.  As we pulled out of Day's End RV Park around 0845 we knew we would see no new territory this day.....we had covered over 730 new (for us) US 395 miles over 5 days.  From this point on we will be covering familiar ground.....ground which we have covered dozens of times over the years, but never get tired of seeing.

Initially there was blue sky with clouds.......

.....but as we gain elevation back up to 5,000' at one point the view changes significantly.....

......this scene is starkly different than what we saw along this stretch exactly one year ago on our way to work at Amazon in Fernley, NV.....there might have been a touch of snow on the tops of the mountains in the distance, but nothing like this.  I hope this significant early snowfall bodes well for a heavy Sierra Nevada snowpack this year, but I wish it would have waited about 10 days as this may.....I say MAY....affect our plans to do much boondocking before we descend to Bishop, CA and the Owens Valley.  

By the time we hit Carson City it was time to 'pay the rent' as we say....i.e., buy some diesel.  We were down to a quarter tank, and I really don't like getting much below that, and besides, the best diesel price we will see between here and Riverside, CA is right there at Eagle Gas where we fueled up on our way to Cape Blanco back in late August.  We took on 130 gallons at $2.29/gallon of which we will consume a little less than half between here and Riverside, CA.

Initially we thought we would stay at Sparks Marina RV Park for the three days we will be in the area visiting friends and relatives, but their daily rate is $33, whereas the rate at Silver City RV Resort just south of Indian Hills, NV (includes the Passport America discount) is $19, and it puts us south of the Reno/Sparks traffic when we head further south Friday.....I think that's a win/win for us.

In all we covered just over 110 miles Tuesday, and by the time we reached Silver City RV Resort our mileage total since leaving Spokane hit 840.....only 500 to go to Riverside!  We plan to arrive there around the 22nd, or 23rd.....just before Thanksgiving.....so we have about 3 weeks to boondock, explore and continue recharging before we reinsert ourselves into the social whirl of the holidays, and our family.

Just after settling into our site for the next 3 days we headed over to In-'N-Out for a burger, then to T.J's to resupply our wine stores, then to Walmart and back home.  We arranged to meet my cousin Lois, her husband John, my uncle Bob and aunt Jane at Murrieta's in Sparks for an early dinner at 1630, which is a 100 mile round trip drive from our present location, so we left around 1530 anticipating it would take close to an hour to get to the restaurant on the east end of Sparks.  Even though it was quite a drive just for dinner, we are also planning to drive up to South Lake Tahoe to visit with our friends who are still there Thursday, so whether we stayed in Sparks, or where we are we would have had a very long round trip drive one of those days.

We did arrive just at 1630 just as our relatives were being seated.....perfect.  Murrieta's gets 3.5 stars from Yelp......TLE said her rating would be 2.5 stars based on her dinner choices, but I would be more than content with the 3.5 based on my Chile Relleno/Beef Enchilada combination dinner (#6).  This is one of the rare times when we do not agree.  Nevertheless, we had a wonderful 2 hours talking before it was time for us to begin our one hour drive back to Silver City RV Resort.  

We arrived home around 1930 and settled into a night of reading, and some TV watching.....NCIS and NCIS New Orleans were on....I was in bed by 2200, and TLE followed an hour later.

When we opened the curtains today we found it has snowed overnight.....not enough to stick to the asphalt, but enough to stick to cold metal.....apparently.......

.....I guess this is how you know you have not moved south soon enough, right?  As I type it has begun to snow at a pretty steady rate, which may affect our plans to drive up to South Lake Tahoe this afternoon....

All that being said, we are both happy to be plugged into 50 amp service (actually 100 amps) for the next three days.....it looks like winter is coming early in Carson City.....

Thanks for stopping by!