Monthly Archives: August 2013

Alumafandango trip – Days 16 & 17

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As I write this we are home. Thus begins the unpacking, cleaning, etc. cycle. Since most of the last three days were travel related, the information may not be very exciting but here goes.

We left the Boomtown KOA and headed westbound on I80. I don’t think I have ever driven this stretch of road let alone with our trailer. The uphill was not bad to Donner pass as it was a short piece of long uphill. However the downhill into the central valley was a bit more. The warning sign stated 40 miles of downgrade! Ouch! However it was not as bad as advertised. There were stretches of 5-6% downgrades but they were relatively short.

We stopped at the first rest area on the downhill and it further provided evidence to my theory. The theory is that California puts its’ nicest rest areas as the first ones that travelers hit when they enter the state. Then they think ALL California rest areas are like that. Psstt. They aren’t.

We spent the night in Sacramento to visit Roxie’s sister for a bit.

The next day was the day everyone dreads in a vacation. The last one home.  It was uneventful other than the temperature was over 100 after we left Stockton.

In summary, the trip was very good. It did prove that we can stay at length in this trailer. I am not sure we could do that in our old 25′. We will now anticipate the time when retirement comes (look on the right side of the blog to see the time).

I will probably have an addendum for the whole trip in a bit. This is after I see Roxie’s pictures and if I think of anything to say that I missed.

Thanks for reading the trip!

Alumafandango trip – Day 15

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We haven’t been to Reno for 29 years.  The last time was shortly after our son was born, he will turn 30 soon.  We thought we would take a short trip and have my parents watch him all those years ago.  We were supposed to stay two nights but Roxie could only handle one.  She missed him.  I thought we would stay a couple of days to see Lake Tahoe and then some other things in Reno.  We started by heading through Truckee but got sidetracked at the Donner Memorial State Park.

We all remember the worst part of the Donner party’s episode.  Cannibalism.  However there is much more interesting parts to their journey as we saw in a very old film they showed in the visitors center.  It reminded me of the films we used to see in elementary school.  It is a very nice state park there with a campground that we will have to visit in the future.  Here is a picture of the Donner Memorial.  The base of the memorial is the same height of the snow drifts they had to contend with:

Donner Memorial

We had lunch in Truckee at the Squeeze In.  We thought this was the same restaurant (Squeeze Inn) that we had eaten at in Sacramento and Lodi.  It wasn’t.  That was disappointing because Roxie was thinking about their burgers and really wanted one.  The food was very good, however.  Probably the best garlic fries that I have had.

We started the drive on SR89.  We followed the Truckee river and saw many rafters and a very nice bike path.  This appealed to Roxie and she put it on her mental list of things to do in the future.  One fact I did not know about Lake Tahoe is that the Truckee river is the ONLY outlet from the lake and it empties into Pyramid Lake.  However Pyramid Lake does not empty anywhere, it just evaporates.  So Lake Tahoe is the only lake in the US that does not eventually empty to an ocean.

We reached the lake and initially I was just going to go around the north part and head back to Reno.  But we had time and nothing else to do so we went south and around that end, back to the north side and up through Mt Rose and down to Reno.  It was a very pretty drive but surprisingly busy and commercial.  Here is a gallery of pictures:

We completed our day trip.  The campground was windy and smoky for the second night because of fires in California and was not too pleasant.  But it sure did cool down at night, which I like.

The trip is winding down, unfortunately.  I have to get back to work but this was a good precursor to retirement.