Trip 2005 - Nevada

The goal for today's drive was to make it to Salt Lake City, which was close to 600 miles away representing a good 8 hour drive. Most of the drive proved to be quite boring after we got out of the mountains, because we were left with only deserts during the Nevada drive. There were several points of interests today, including Carson City and Reno, but non of them interesting enough to get us out of the car to check them out in person. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Carson City (represented by the Capital building and one of its old time casinos) is the capital of the state of Nevada. I'd look it up to see why, but frankly I just don't care. It just looked like a city that existed just because.

I saw this Hilton hotel/casino from the freeway probably because it was one of the biggest buildings in the "Biggest Little City in the World." That's right, we were in Reno. Reno is one of those cities that really shouldn't exist but it does because of legalized gambling. I guess it used to be a big gambling hotspot prior to the 1960's, until Las Vegas took off and stole its thunder. Now it struggles to attract people, most likely because an mechanical race of hybrid car/spiders have taken over the city and perch atop buildings trying to kill people. I've seen enough abnormal monster movies to know that the last place you want to be in the event of an infestation is a small lightly populated South Western city. I have Hollywood to thank for getting the word out about places like this. Using my movie knowledge to our advantage, we kept right on driving through Reno and continued towards our destination.

I realize now how different that this trip would have been had I been with people who are of legalized gambling age and who are not Tim and Sarah. First off, I would have stopped here to do a little gambling, secondly I would have stopped anywhere. I hate to badmouth people, but at this point both of the kids wanted to get home so badly that we decided to just drive. From here on out (not to ruin this adventure for you, but I feel like I have to) we barely stopped except to sleep or for food + gas. This turned out to be a good thing when this dust devil twister threatened our safety. If Tim hadn't been driving like he was late to his own wedding, we would have been caught up in it Bill Paxton-style.

When we did stop it was at a rest stop where there was nothing of interest, unless you count vending machines and toilets. While this may please those with a case of the munchies or those who need to urinate, I was unimpressed. In my countless travels across the country I have stopped at far too many rest stops and rest areas that have failed to do any more than to serve the purposes previously listed in the last sentence.