Reno Rendezvous 2010 - Days 1 and 2

L and N tend to see their Maine grandparents (Mimi and Grampy) more frequently than you might expect given our cross-continental status. Since the kids were born we've been able to hook up with my folks at least once or twice a year, alternating our reunions between the East and West Coasts, and trying to incorporate as much vacation fun as possible into the mix. Last summer we did a rather extensive northern seaboard excursion that took us between Pennsylvania and Maine and back again. This year we kept a little more local, meeting my folks up in Reno for a few days (to give them their gambling fix) and then another couple of days in Lake Tahoe, for my outdoorsy benefit. This time there was an added enticement for the kids because Stacy's folks (Poppa and Grandma) were able to join us on the Reno leg!

Knowing Stacy's head doesn't much love the "CLING! CLING! CLING!" and flashing lights of the the casino world, Mimi and Grampy flew out to Reno on Easter Sunday, a day before we were to meet them, to "earn enough to pay for the trip." Meanwhile, Poppa joined us at church in the morning for the Easter service and then we all regrouped up in Agua Dulce in the afternoon for Easter Dinner. It was an ideal arrangement because Agua Dulce is an hour's drive out of L.A., and it's right off the Antelope Vally Freeway (Hwy 14), which is the road we had to take to get to Reno anyway. We had dinner with Stacy's parents and the kids got to do just what Stacy was hoping to avoid in Reno. Poppa has a number of vintage, probably antique, slot machines, the kind you have to actually put coins into by hand and pull a lever to operate. He loves to let the kids feed the machine with the bucket of quarters he keeps handy. I think he started getting a little concerned, however, toward the end of the evening, when L started into a lucky streak and pretty much cleaned his machine out. Hold on one second:

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: No monetary funds were actually transferred
to underaged persons in the engaging of this recreational activity!

There. I feel better.

We spent the night at Kirk and Lynne's, and got an easy jumpstart out of L.A. in the wee hours on Monday. At least 6am is considered "wee" for us. We knew the more time spent on the road with sleeping kids, the less time spent on the road with screaming kids. It was a good plan in theory anyway. We tried to slip the kids in the car with their jammies on, but it was cold enough outside that they were up and chatty before we could get them in their car seats. We kept to our early departure time, however and took off for the great white north. Kirk and Lynne hung back a while to walk dogs and finish packing. (I wasn't worried that we'd beat them there. We don't exactly burn up the road.)

A quick coffee in beautiful Palmdale, and it was on to Mojave for a gourmet McDonald's breakfast. (We had to step it down a notch because Carl's Jr. hadn't opened yet...) L and N were quite impressed with the enormous train yard right across the highway from the Micky-D's. We counted off, with mounting excitement, a train being pulled by - WOW - six locomotive engines! And each had a huge American flag painted across it! We could have called the vacation complete at that. But we didn't. Tanked up on copious Egg McMuffins and Styrofoam pancakes, we remounted the desert highway and set our course north for the Sierras, the southern most vestiges of which where vaguely visible in the far-off distance.

If you take California Highway 14 north from Mojave you drive for 30 miles or so across the famed Mojave desert. There are not a lot of good things to say about this desert when you are speeding through it. I'm sure there are all kinds of wonders and amazements if you get out and up close and personal, but from the road it's rather depressing. There are a handful of towns and lean-tos dotting the road, but mostly its just open scrub brush with an amazing array of powerlines running through it. (Gotta feed the L.A. beast somehow!) But once you get to Red Rock Canyon State Park and join up with Highway 395 you pull along side the long stretch of the eastern slope of the Sierras and things (slowly) start to get interesting. The Owens River valley is a long narrow gulch blocked by the Sierras on the west and the Inyo and White Mountains on the east. It's in a rain shadow due to the Sierra Nevadas, so it is a pretty dry and lonely place. But at least here, unlike Mojave, there are signs of life. Cattle, deer and even elk can be spotted from the road, and its not uncommon to roll a minivan a couple of times swerving to dodge jack rabbits, squirrels and the occasional road runner. (Beep beep!)

Southern Owen's Valley in Green

Arid though it be, we've gotten a lot of rain this winter, and even the Owens Valley benefited from the boon. It doesn't take much to make a desert grateful. The few scraggly trees that lurked about were festooned in new green and there were flocks of wildflowers blanketing the fields below Sierra slopes and erupting out of the dry lake beds. The mountains on either side were snowy white all the way down to the edge of the valley. The few collections of water left in the Owens River (another victim of the appetite of L.A.) were sitting at levels I'd never seen before.

It was an overcast drive through the Owens Valley. So overcast, in fact, that the Sierras that should have been rolling by on our left disappeared in the clouds as soon as they broke from the valley slopes. The few ridges and arms that we could see beneath the cloud cover were dusted with snow. The more we drove, the more cloudy it became. A storm seemed to be following us up the valley. About the time we got to Independence we started getting the first of the snow flurries. As we proceeded toward Big Pine and Bishop, gaining altitude only slightly, the snow line sank lower and lower and eventually the flurries would be matched by patches of white a mile or two wide along the road. Strangely as we got to Bishop, the snowing stopped.

Snow Descending the Sierras

The White Mountains to the East

Through the miracles of modern technology we were able to ascertain that Stacy's folks were only twenty minutes or so behind us on our arrival to Bishop, our planned lunchtime rendezvous. In the interim we gassed up and Stacy talked to some of the locals about the road conditions further up the mountains. It seemed likely we would need tire chains eventually, so we picked up a set to have at the ready. By then the stars aligned and we converged with Poppa and Grandma at the famed Schat's Bakery for lunch. We love that place, as does everyone else travelling on highway 395 it seems. We picked up some sandwiches for lunch and cookies for the road, and crossed the street to eat in a park. Some rather hungry ducks and geese kept N intrigued.









Bishop is essentially the gateway to the Eastern Sierras. If you continue on Hwy 395 you will almost immediately hit a long-haul climb where you leap from 4500 ft to over 7000 ft in about 20 miles. It's the most direct route to Reno, and this is where you hit the mountains for real. It's also where you'll hit the snow in abundance if you catch it just right. An alternate route, Hwy 6, branches out a little into the desert to the east and cuts into Nevada. A little more out of the way, it avoids the higher altitudes and subsequently most of the risk of snowy roads. Based on more conferences with folks about town we decided to play it safe and head up Highway 6. In spite of our caution, we still climbed a bit and couldn't fully dodge the snow and flurries and light sleet that pecked at us as we road. Eventually the weather had its way and all along the road the desert was covered with an inch or two of powder, and looked all crumbled and lumpy, like a fiberglass insulation factory had exploded nearby.

Open Road: Highway 6 North of Bishop

Eventually the call of the snow (and other things) lured us to the roadside...











From the 6, we struck Hwy 95 which meandered about the desert valleys with barren hills on all sides. Our drive took us on routes I'd never seen before, up through really strange and isolated desert towns. The snow disappeared entirely and if it weren't for the hills breaking up the terrain it would have been a vision of Mohave. At Hawthorne we came upon Walker Lake, one of those oxymoronic watersheds in the desert. They always look somewhat ominous and suspect to me, like they're probably filled with sulfur and house only mutant creatures bent on evil. The lake is huge and Stacy and I thought for a while that that we saw jet fighters practicing their dog fights over the lake. With all the pseudomilitary bases around, it wouldn't have been too big a surprise. We've watched them train before over the Owens lakebed. We thought we saw them a couple of times, but they were quite a ways away and we could have been mistaken. They might very well have been dueling seagulls or, more likely, a pair of pteranodons being ridden by Nazgul.





The remainder of the drive was taken up with walkie-talkie silliness between L and N in our car and Poppa and Grandma in the lead. A pit stop in Fallon for chocolate-dipped DQ cones went a long way to stifling the late-afternoon whimperings. We entered Reno around 5pm, after eleven hours on the road - actually a lot more of an efficient run than I'd expected. It took us only a few more minutes to track down Mimi and Grampy at the Peppermill Casino and Hotel and get our copious junk into our copious rooms. Dinner with all the folks in the casino coffee shop made for a raucous occasion. Mimi and Grampy were mobbed by the kids, and what little energy everyone had left was spent enthusiasically. By 7pm little more needed to be done to convince the kids that an early bedtime was a propos. With only two rooms between the eight of us, we divided and conquored. Stacy and N crashed with Poppa and Grandma, and L and I bunked with Mimi and Grampy. It felt rather odd to be on our first real night of vacation and sleeping in separate rooms, but at least it gave the kids some much-needed time apart to enjoy the grandparents.