Road Stories

Road Stories

 

We had planned on visiting the Redwood National Park, but at the last minute changed our plans and spent a little extra time in Monterey.  Pretty sure the Redwoods will hang around another year or so for us to visit.

100 Miles of Fruit Trees

We took Route 156/152 across country to catch I 5.  Along the way we saw some strange cows….turned and looked a little closer and discovered they were elk standing beside the road and apparently counting cars. Speaking of cows… Mona observed that cows seldom run.  She asked if I knew why.  “No…do you?” “Of course I do,” she said, “It’s because they run so funny and everyone laughs when they do.”  Can’t argue with that!

At Lake Tahoe

We soon entered the Joaquin Valley….this is home to huge farms and orchards.  There is mile after mile of blooming trees of different shades of pinks and whites.  I’ve never seen so many fruit trees.  At a rest area we learned that this area provides 25% of America’s produce….amazing!

A few hours later we were in Lake Tahoe.  Beautiful aqua blue lake surrounded by mountains and snow.  There seemed to be thousands of skiers in the area…most walking along the road.  Not sure where their skis went! After Tahoe we cruised through Reno for a while and grabbed a bite before tackling the rest of Nevada.

Nevada’s I 80

Nevada goes a long long long way on I 80 with basically the same scenery: mountains, snow, scrub and the same things again.  The nice thing is the speed limit is 75.  The bad thing was we had a stalker….in a blue Dodge pickup.  He’d pull up alongside us, cruise there for a few miles….then back off a few miles.  A little while later he’d zoom back up and pull up beside us.  That cycle repeated for over 150 miles.   Made me wish we had brought a little more firepower than a walking stick.  Finally, he pulled off the highway about 100 miles before our turnoff.  Big Relief!!!

Did you know that on I 80 in Nevada there is a town named Oreana?  And just a ways further down the road is Argenta.  Did not know that till this drive.

Mona and I were talking about the sights in Nevada…she said, “They were far and few between.” Profound!  (You get a little loopy on I 80 so everything seems funny….too bad we didn’t see any cows running!)

Driving across a portion of The Great Salt Lake

At last, we reached the Bonneville Flats and then the Great Salt Lake.  Finally, different
scenery!  Then after Salt Lake City we turned into the mountains.  We saw two bald eagles almost immediately and soon after started seeing elk, wild horses, antelope and deer.  Hundreds of antelope and deer!

We landed in Rawlins, Wyoming for the night.  Did a little geocaching and found two very unusual cemetery caches.  The first was at an old prison cemetery.  Here are the graves of the “Unclaimed”, prisoners whose families didn’t claim them.  All that is there are some simple stones with just names on them and a board outside showing their birthdays and the date they died or were executed.

If you look closely you can see the deer deck.

While heading to the second cache we startled eight deer in the cemetery.  They crossed the street in front of us and went to a yard where three of them got up on the house’s deck.  Too funny!

The second cache took us to two gravestones and asked how these people came to be here.  We read the stones and found that both had been killed while pursuing train robbers on August 19, 1978.  From this cache we learned about Big Nose George Parrot, the Outlaw Who Grew to Be A Shoe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nose_George) It’s amazing what you see/learn from geocaching!

More driving tomorrow…..can’t wait to see what’s on the road ahead!

 

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