Dreams, Moments, Travels
Poor photography habits and inattention to detail produced this blurry photo, but there’s the other sad part of the story: we took no other photos the day we returned to Arizona. That’s our friend Mark Shimer having breakfast with us at the Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles.
A million wonderful impressions of places that we visit even briefly are better than the alternative of having never been to them. This is not our first time to Monterey, and over the previous nearly ten years, this might be the fourth or fifth, maybe even the sixth or seventh time we’ve been here. So collectively, we have a ton of memories nurtured here, 100 miles south of San Francisco on the California coast.
You didn’t think we’d stop here and not dip into the Monterey Bay Aquarium, even if it was just for an hour or two, did you?
A short walk in the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove during the fall and the height of the migration season is also mandatory.
That’s a lighthouse and some historic buildings out on Point Sur, but its visitation hours and days are very limited. Check out the Point Sur Lighthouse website for more info.
We stayed along the ocean as long as we had available light to enjoy the views. From the coast, we headed inland for the night. The next day, we stopped in Los Angeles for breakfast at the Original Pantry Cafe with our old friend Mark Shimer before finishing our drive back to Phoenix after our epic Thanksgiving road trip.
Our trip out of Carson City to Truckee and the famous Donner Pass area just west of town was a white-knuckle ride that didn’t allow a single photo to be taken. Yesterday’s icy road communicated to us that there was a good chance for snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains. Without snow tires or chains, we approached a check-in station at the California border and explained our situation and the officer told us to catch up with the snowplows that were just ahead of us and stay behind them until we were out of the snowline. We were as nervous as could be as it snowed nearly the entire time we were in the mountains, and while it was incredibly beautiful, we were too attentive to the trucks in front of us and the snow that was accumulating on the road even as they cleared it. Out of the mountains and finally back into the sunlight, we were able to relax.
This abandoned boat and rainbow will stay with me forever as my first impression of the Point Reyes area.
Looking north up the Point Reyes seashore.
The road out here is not for the faint of heart, and I thought the coastal highway between San Simeon and Big Sur was nearly panic-inducing.
Wouldn’t I love to tell you that this was the place we’d be spending the night, but it wasn’t, as we tend to opt for the cheapest places we can find. Maybe someday.
Even in relatively poor weather, this place shines with all the beauty and solitude of an unspoiled coast not overrun by commercial enterprises and private residences. This is the Point Reyes Lighthouse that, weather permitting, allows visitors during very limited hours between Fridays and Mondays.
Guess where we’ll have to come back to?
Even under the threat of a hostile weather front on the horizon, this place is incredible. It’s almost unbelievable that just across a bay is the city of San Francisco.
I can’t believe we only had a few hours out here, but it was enough to ensure that we’d return.
It’s cold, icy, and a bit scary for people from Phoenix and just the way it is. Welcome to Highway 50, also known as the “Loneliest Road in America.”
Fortunately, we didn’t run into any more ice- or even snow-covered roads. Matter of fact, within about a half-hour, the road was dry. Eureka was the first small town we came upon and, lucky for us, the Pony Express Cafe was open and serving up breakfast burritos and hot coffee.
This was the typical view out here. Pretty lonely, huh?
I’m guessing the tree limbs have traveled out of the mountains with rains that washed them out?
With all these stops, it will take forever to drive across Nevada, but it’s okay because I love these drives out here with my best friend holding my hand.
This mailbox surprised us because search as we might, we couldn’t find a house out here that this could belong to.
Austin, Nevada, is one of the small towns along the road that would benefit from 24-hour information availability to bring our attention to the relevant facts and interesting places in town.
Edit: 17 years after our visit, while we now have smartphones, we still don’t have truly smart apps that tap an area and bring our attention to things that would be of interest. Even when looking up a place on the internet, we get a hodgepodge of disjointed information and have a terrible time trying to figure out a reasonable place to eat.
The perfect road for hitting 110 mph.
This is the “Shoe Tree” near Middlegate, Nevada. I’d imagine this thing gets pretty heavy after a good rain.
Something nice about arriving in an old town not ravaged by modernity. Welcome to Virginia City, Nevada. Mark Twain lived here when he was still Samuel Clemens. He started as a miner, but since that wasn’t successful, he ended up working for a local newspaper. His famous nom de plume “Mark Twain” made its first appearance in 1863 when he was an editor at the “Territorial Enterprise.”
One hundred thirty years ago, Virginia City had a population of about 25,000; today, it is about 1,000. Back then, the Comstock Lode was the first major deposit of silver discovered in the United States and turned Virginia City into a boomtown. Today, tourists are helping keep it alive.
Before checking into our motel in Carson City, Nevada, we drove over to Lake Tahoe for a look at this famous spot on the California-Nevada border. When we got to our motel, we were greeted with an amazing sight of thousands of tumbleweeds piled up against one side of the building and stairwell due to a recent windstorm that seemed to have delivered all the tumbleweeds from a 50-mile radius right to our doorstep.
Leaving Las Vegas a little later than we typically would because we were up late last night. One thing about Vegas is that for us, it doesn’t really get going until about 9:00 p.m. and is downright electrifying in the wee hours of the night, creating a good reason to sleep in. We are driving north.
It’s only 243 miles (400 km) to our destination today, but it will take about twice as many hours as usual with all of our stops to see stuff along the way.
Reminder photo to return to soak in a barrel of mineral water away from the trains on a future visit.
Exposed geology that allows us to look below the surface is always attractive and worth a stop.
A sober reminder that as we travel north here in November, places away from the desert tend to get cold and even have snow. There are so many times we’ll leave Phoenix and have forgotten this little fact that necessitates things like warm clothes and driving in conditions we are not accustomed to.
God rays illuminating a small patch of ground is not something you see every day.
Even rarer is the glow of sunset hidden from our view by overcast skies that manage to puncture the cloud cover to cast pink against snow-spattered mountains.
We’ve reached our destination of Ely, Nevada, and the idea of Thanksgiving dinner at an old casino hotel in a dusty old town sounds like the perfect recipe for a lifelong memory. Being served by a middle-aged smoking lady steeped in the tradition of being a waitress in the classic 1960s sense only added to the mystique.
“Leave Wednesday night after work and avoid airports” is our motto for traveling over the long Thanksgiving holiday. The other trick is to return on Monday to avoid the Sunday crush to get home. We are about to cross the Hoover Dam on our “short” drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas, Nevada, which is just under 300 miles from home.
Once in Vegas, it’s time to see as much as possible to feed our senses as many impressions as we can. From gondolas of Venice…
…to pirates battling on the high seas, we love moving from fantasy experience to fantasy experience along the strip.
Visiting the Roman elegance of Caesars Palace we go from here to…
…the lobby of the Bellagio to check out the ceiling installation by Dale Chihuly.
The novelty of the Vegas skyline, with elements of New York City, Paris, Venice, and Rome thrown in, never fails to impress us. Where Sin City does fail is in attracting us to gamble or call a hooker to our room. Buffets can be cool but can also be a bit hit-or-miss, which makes taking the gamble on them less enticing with each subsequent visit. Tonight, though, was all about sightseeing until well after midnight.