COLUSA, CA TO BEATTY, NV

With an early Pacific Storm about to blow across Northern California, we were up early, with the intent of getting across the Sierras before it could do too much damage.  Saying goodbye to Nancy, after spending the last 5 months together, was not the easiest thing, and something that we weren't looking forward to.  Knowing that Patty will see her again, when they jet off to Costa Rica in about a month, and that I'll be seeing her again this winter, sort of made it a little easier to say adios.  After big hugs, she headed south, and we continued east on Hwy 20.

We had reservations at the Snowflower Thousand Trails near Truckee, but with this storm approaching, I canceled, and we decided to just put the hammer down, and head for home. It wasn't long before we were in the foothills, and somewhere around Grass Valley, the rain started.  It stayed with us all the way over the mountain, not stopping until just before we rolled through Reno.  At Fernley, east of Reno, we left I80 for the less heavily traveled two lanes of Hwy 50A.  At Fallon,  we picked up US95, a road through the outback of Nevada, that left no doubt that we were back in the desert once again.

 Leaving the golden state for the silver state.

 Passing through Reno, "The Biggest Little City".

I'm sure there's lots of folks who hate driving in the wide open space of the desert, but I'm not one of them.  Except for the pretty stiff crosswind that occasionally brought me back to reality, my thoughts were free to wander as far as the seemingly endless straight stretches of road.  With a few small towns like Hawthorne, Tonopah, & Goldfield to break up the unobstructed views, we pulled into the Beatty RV Park a little after 5pm, having covered a lot of ground.  Today, we'll either get all the way home, or, more probably stop somewhere so that we don't pull into the homestead during the hours of darkness

Miles traveled - 480  Cumulative miles - 9,909
Beatty RV Park - $25  Cumulative RV Parks - $1,880.35
Diesel Fernley Pilot - 37.9 @ $3.99 = $151.20
Cumulative fuel total - $5,412.12
MPG - 5.1  Cumulative average MPG - 7.8