West to California

We wanted to get many miles behind us on Tuesday and make it to higher elevation forests in California, so we left Welcome Station on Tuesday morning - sad to leave our friends...

A few pictures from Welcome Station before we left:

Walking out under the trees...

The falls on the creek...

Nancy and Art had planted hen 'n' chicks along the far bank.

As I was walking by the wood pile, I was thinking, "It is interesting that I haven't seen any snakes... but as I walked along the stones along the pond, I saw a small garter snake (I guess).

Zooming in on the picture - he had a pretty design on his back.

Looking back toward the RVs - the Jee-rage is hooked up and Miss Doozie is ready to go!

Heading west on I-80...

Big sky and big mountains...

Getting closer to Elko.

Approaching the Carlin tunnel...

In the tunnel.

Continuing on towards Reno...

The road looks like it just continues forever!

The marker on the mountain above Battle Mountain (we looked it up, no particular battle was fought there).

 

A triple-trailer of hay passing us.

We saw a number of dust devils...

This one was particularly tall and continued on for a long time - we could see it for quite a distance.

Beyond Reno, into California. We started climbing in elevation. We had planned to stop at Janesville at a Rest Area, but it was only at about 4000' and was still quite warm there (90F). There was also a sign as we entered indicating that we could only stay for a maximum of 8 hours, which would require us to leave by 3am... not ideal. We decided to press on to another location that we had read about in the Days End Directory that indicated it didn't have a stay limit.

We got to Bogard Trailhead Sno-Park. In the winter, this would be a parking area for snowmobile trails, but in the summer, it can be used for other parking, so we settled in for the night.