Friday was a very up and down day. We had a leisurely start and did some food shopping in Carson City so that we can self cater breakfast and lunch. Then I persuaded a reluctant Bob to drive to the US Government offices to enquire about purchasing a National Parks Pass. We are visiting so many National Parks that their annual pass is cost effective. When we arrived there the staff were very unhelpful and couldn't guarantee that the first park we are going to would ne able to sell us one. So between the two of us we were mightily annoyed. Meanwhile Bob had been consulting the GPS which said that our destination was 6 hours away instead of the 4 that Google had advised. Since it was already midday that meant we would be arriving late. AND IT WAS MY FAULT.
Things simmered down as we rolled down the highway. We were heading out into the Nevada desert and as Bob commented " it made the Nullabor look like a forest". However the terrain is made up of chains of hills interspersed with large flat valleys. The hills became progressively higher and had more shrubby comifers dotted over them due to the fact that they are snow covered in the winter and the melt irrigates the trees in the summer. Also in the valleys surrounding the three main towns they have diverted water courses and built reservoirs to capture the snow melt and irrigate the land. So in the midst of this rugged barren area there a green patches if agricultural production. This whole area is more than 4,000 feet above sea level and as we drove over the mountain passes they were mostly over 7,000 feet. This made the approaches fairly long and steep but fortunately the road is good. It was an interesting drive and we arrived at our destination, Eureka Nevada by 4-30pm proving google right. The fun was just beginning though. We had booked a hotel through Expedia and as we drove through the very "western" small town we searched for our hotel without success. We put the address into the GPS and she took us 7 miles back out of town to a new housing development with no hotel. By now we realised that we were in trouble because there was only 3 motels in this town and the first to were full. Apparently there is a lot of construction going on in the area and thus lots of workers needing room. We spotted an older motel back at the beginning of town and hustled down there. It was old but immaculately kept and cheap as well. We took a room and I would recommend the Ruby Hill Motel to anyone. We soon had three couples from Utah who were riding Harleys taking the rooms next to us.Naturally there was a bit of bike chat.
This morning two more events made the stay memorable. A group of deer strolled down the highway outside our room on their way to breakfast. Then our biker neighbours held a prayer meeting on the lawn outside their room.
I am attaching some photos ( I hope) of Lake Tahoe. These are a day behind because I was having trouble working out the storage system on my new tablet. Elise was bemused by my photo of a car park recently not appreciating that it was of the entrance building of the Peppermill and I was trying to give an imppression of the scale of the buildings.
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