Rainy Reno
Just before the tri, we were in Reno. I had to attend and present at a conference (which went very well), so we thought we'd make it a mini-vacation. Bad idea.
It rained every single day we were there, except the day we drove to the airport. We planned on doing some hiking in Tahoe, renting bikes, running the streets of Reno...No. We spent a week inside a casino, where the blinking and buzzing and dinging numb your brain and you can never tell whether it's night or day.
We tried going out to the pool one day, but it rained. We went to Harrah's automobile museum, where they had tons of awesome cars and a pretty cool Ed Roth/Rat Fink exhibit. I got a sweet t-shirt. Ophelia talked to EVERY car we looked at. She's truly an Eddens and a Meyer. I fell in love the grills. Somethin' about those round light eyes and shiny metal mouths.
Mostly, when I wasn't at the conference, we spent our time at Circus Circus playing video games, which was actually totally fun. You can only gamble so much when you don't want to spend money and can't take a baby on the gaming floor, so House of Dead 4, Fast and the Furious and good ol' SkeeBall satisfied our need for a thrill. We also got to see Sam's sister Erin, who was in the process of moving from Tempe, AZ to Portland, OR. Pretty awesome. We don't get to visit with her much, and she and her friend Bethany stayed a day with us, with Bethany's dog PJ stuffed in a doggie dufflebag and toted along.
I'm thinking we'll never go back to Reno, except perhaps to pass through to Lake Tahoe. Reno is pretty much an armpit. I did at least get some cute pics though...
Tuckered out
We were at the pool about 10 minutes and then...
Tuckered out redux
Look, the sun! Oh...we're on the way to the airport.
Plug it, Daddy!
You've got to get out of the casinos to enjoy Reno, which is NOT an armpit (that would be Battle Mountain - http://www.cse.unr.edu/~mees/bmsite/index.html). All the recent rain is unusual for our desert climate, but those of us who live here appreciate the water. It will come in handy when the heat is on this summer. Visit http://renotahoe.about.com to learn more about Reno, then come on back and give us another chance.
You're right Stan, we need to get back when it's sunny and nice. We drove around some of the horse and llama ranches on our way to the airport, and it was very pretty.
We'll head head out there again someday...
Sorry, Stan. Connie and I were in Reno a couple of years ago and I think Kate's first description is accurate. Armpit. The car museum and a great family-style Basque restaurant were about the only things we found it had going for it. And the weather was nice while we were there.