Off to Reno today for our last stop of seven. As we’d been planning this, it hadn’t occurred to me to worry about this, but more than one person had said, “driving through the mountains in December? Beware of snow!” This journey included the Donner pass, after all. But I’d been checking the weather and it looked like all we’d be dealing with was rain. I’m not sure what we would have done if it had been awful snow – no real way to go around.

We got up, proto-packed, downstairs for breakfast.  I eyeflirted with a handsome earringed bear, but it’s hard to be flirtatious with your elderly dad in tow. Back up stairs and Dad, why aren’t you packed yet?  Oh yes, because you were futzing around doing email before we went to breakfast.  Not that we were in a rush, but again, worried about the drive. Finally ready, summoned bellhop, checked out, wheeled car around into the hotel ‘alley’ to load up. 

Rainy on the drive, which was almost all Rt. 80.  Listened to a two hour All In with Jason Johnson, then music.  One of my favorite romance series (“Bonfires” by Amy Lane) takes place in the mountains outside Sacramento, so I was eager to see what the countryside looked like (very pretty, as expected). We did stop to tank up and pee and did actually eat our leftover sandwiches, hurrah.

Once we really got into the mountains, sure enough, the weather was awful – it was rainy with very poor visibility. And it was like that all the way through, so I understood everyone’s concern.  If it had been snowing, it would have been awful. But with careful driving, it wasn’t really a problem and we got out of it about noon, way ahead of schedule.

We decided to go straight to the car museum, which was really good.  One thing Dad had been disappointed about with the Petersen museum in LA was it didn’t have historical cars going back to the Beginning of Car. This place did, though, quite thoroughly. Their collection was huge – was originally mostly owned by the Harrah of casino fame. As with the other museum, Dad was full of informational tidbits that I had no reference for and no way to respond to, other than, “how interesting”. (At some point, Dad needs to go to a car museum with his buddy Tom. They could spend all day bouncing facts off each other.)

We did have a funny eye-roll exchange. We’re examining some car’s grill.

Me: Dad, when I was a kid, I vaguely remember that you told me about some car manufacturer where the grille was a special shape or something and you could identify the car that way. What was that?

Dad: I don’t know what you’re talking about

(later)

Dad: see this Packard? Look at the grille. They all had that rounded shape with the horizontal bits at either end.

Me; (refrains from strangling him): Dad, remember that conversation we had in the last collection? That’s what I was talking about.

Dad: Oh.

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We had made such good time it was still pretty early, maybe 1:00. We headed to the hotel, which was another Marriot Courtyard, like the one we stayed in in Santa Cruz. By this point we were getting some weird vibes – Reno seemed dead dead dead, and the hotel was as well, very Langoliers. (I think Reno kind of cratered during COVID and hasn’t come back yet).  Little pissy twink at the registration desk decided to pull the ‘you’re not supposed to check in until 300” line, but I just stared at him and blandly asked, ‘do you have a room ready now?”.  I can’t imagine they were full.

They had luggage carts, but no bellhops, so I stacked up the luggage myself (badly) and we went up. Odd room, but decent in size. We were right by the river and in fact looked directly across at the car museum we’d just been at.

Then Dad is raring to go to do… what?  I hadn’t planned that far ahead. There was a ‘River Walk‘ (but we couldn’t really do a lot of walking) and the Neon Line, but it wasn’t super clear where that was. We ended up driving around looking at what we could look at, and did see some neighborhoods and casinos and stuff.  Found a liquor store for Dad’s grappa. (And Dad left his cane behind, and the nice guy behind the counter came out and found us in the car buckling up). 

Then i suggested we go get coffee and pastry or something, but Dad suggested ice cream.  Great idea! There was a nice artisanal ice cream place (Black Rock Dessert) I found through Google Map search.  We went there – and it turned out they were closed Christmas week. BUT! there was a coffee bar right next to it, so we had coffee and pastries anyway.  (I had a very fancy mocha drink.) 

Back to the hotel, resting before dinner. A little Open Table action, I booked us at the La Strada at the El Dorado casino (which is in that picture of the Neon Line) I posted. Another place that I could have easily walked to on my own, but we Uber’d there.

This was an excellent meal. I got a flight of sparkling wine, he got a grappa negroni!  Then I got a followup glass of one of the sparkling wines featured in the flight. We split an octopus appetizer, then a Caesar salad, then he got gnocchi with duck confit and I got lobster and crab tortellini.  It was all great. In general, we had a lot of great dinners on this trip.

Back to the hotel and to bed, me plotting the logistics of the next day in my head.