Day Thirteen - It's Easy to See How the Aliens Chose a Landing Spot

We got up pretty early, for Vegas, and got on the road right away. We had a dinner date with family all the way in Rocklin, CA (just shy of Sacramento) and we had a lot of miles to cover.

We hope you looked at the pictures from yesterday, because the contrast of today's pictures is astounding. Not one hour away from our hotel the landscape turns utterly raw and barren, in a windswept beautiful way. You can practically see the UFOs jockeying for terrain.

this road looks fun...

We meandered on up US 95, also known as Veteran's Memorial Highway. We could see the end to the sunny weather up ahead, and it looked rather ominous. It turned out to just be a rainstorm, which effectively washed 99% of our Moab mud residue off the Disco. Western Nevada is amazing. There is NOTHING out there, for miles. It's so easy to imagine pioneers and explorers riding through that area, and it actually has a lot of history. We stopped for lunch in Tonopah, at a restored hotel called the Mizpah, which has been through many owners and hosted a number of famous people as the town's mining economy waxed and waned. It's currently owned by the people who own Cline Vineyards in California. They have a rockin' Zinfandel...

Shortly after lunch we happened upon an abandoned salt mine. We pulled over to check it out, and it was like nothing we'd ever seen, right there on the side of the highway. About an hour past that we came around a bend and happened upon a huge weapons depot, spooky little mounds extending as far as the eye can see, followed by giant Walker Lake which was the first hint of groundwater we'd seen for many miles.

Google Maps told us back in Vegas that a dinner date in Rocklin was reasonable. Google Maps is a dastardly liar, or else it doesn't take into account the Fully-Laden-Land-Rover effect. It was clear to us at this point that we weren't on schedule, but we pressed on towards Reno.

Speaking of Land Rover effects...

Time for all the Rover doubters to start nodding your heads with a knowing smile. Cruising into Reno, the engine started intermittently cutting out the slightest bit, right around 62mph. Gulp. Dan was pretty sure it was the vehicle speed sensor, and it seemed to behave ok if we kept it around 55. Better picture-taking speed we figured.

We headed through the south Lake Tahoe area right at the most beautiful sunset we'd seen in a long time. This was where we originally intended to camp the previous night, and it was darn cold outside so we didn't regret our second Vegas night.

We finally pulled up at Dan's sister's house a little after 9pm. Everyone was kindly waiting up for us, which we really appreciated since it was a school night. We had a great visit and were happy to reconnect with our Cally peeps.