The rest of the drive.

So the rest of the trip. This is a week later, so i'm sure I'd have had more to say on the subject a week ago, but it's been a crazy week of moving in and all that. Jon and I had a great time and seeing/doing the following things:

Brunch/people watching in downtown Denver on Saturday.

Snowy Rocky mountain drive from Denver towards the Utah border.

An unfortunate speeding ticket (Jon, not me) in the sticks of western colorado. Absolute crap. He was going 76 in a 65 on a road with no curves, just hills. The cop was clearly bored as he was driving towards us and turned around in order to give Jon a ticket.

Dinosaur National Monument which is sort of a national park where you can camp and stuff, but we just got out and looked at the dinosaur bones that were partially uncovered and embedded in the rock face. Pretty cool seeing real bones in a rock.

Our "near disaster" was when we forgot to get gas in this town in Utah and I noticed we were getting low an hour later. We realize we're in the middle of nowhere and Jon, positive as he always is, tries to assure me that we can go at least 90 more miles and surely there's a gas station between now and then. Well we get about 20 more miles down the road and the E light goes on. From my experiences w/ my Civic, I know that this means I've got about 20-25 miles to go before pooping out. As Jon examined the map, it became clear that the nearest town is a good 40 miles away. Well, just as I'm starting to panic in my head, I see some dim lights of what looks like a closed gas station. So we pull in and sure enough, it's closed. Oh, it's also dark out at this point. At this point, I am just hoping that the pumps are kept on at night when Jon and I spot some people inside the dark station. Well, they come out (a man and a woman) and ask if the pump is working, I assure them that it is, and then they go to their cars and leave. Had Jon not been there, I can guarantee that I would have probably shit my pants at this point. Luckily we filled up the tank and were on our way, but I paid attention to the next 4o miles and there was NOWHERE to get gas. I do have AAA who would bring me gas if I needed it, but seeing as how neither of our cell phones had any service whatsoever, we would have just been SOL.Spent the night at a great hotel in Salt Lake City and saw the Temple in Tabernacle Square in the morning. Such wonderfully nice people in Salt Lake. I like those Mormons.

Drove past the Great Salt Lake and through the salt flats which are where they shoot all those car commercials and test cars to see just how fast they can go. It's pretty amazing. We tasted the ground to see if it really did taste like salt and sure enough, salty as hell.

Then we entered Nevada where there were a ton of border casinos. There's not much to say about the drive through Nevada as it is pretty lame, but our one interesting moment came when we stopped to get gas. It was a little town called Winnemucca. And whatthefucca...I pumped gas and Jon went in to grab some drinks and witnessed this exchange (I'll try to get it is close to his story as possible):
Gas Station Employee 1: "Did you hear about the shooting at the bar last night?"
Gas Station Employee 2: "No, what happened?"
E'ee 1: "Well, you know that guy who comes in here all the time with [some sort of description]? Well, he shot up the bar.:
E'ee 2: "Yeah, I know the guy. Why did he do that?"
E'ee 1: "I dunno. Just went crazy I guess. Started shooting at everyone, men, women, children and everything" (note: children? at a bar? what)
E'ee 2: "What happened?"
E'ee 1: "Before the cops could they get there they shot him."
E'ee 2: "They? Who's they?"
E'ee 1: "Some other guys at the bar."
So yeah...when we got to Reno, we saw the news story. Apparently this guy who "just went crazy" shot and killed three guys the night before at this dive bar which apparently had children in it. Bizarre. We vowed never to go back to Winnemucca again.

Sunday night we hung out in Reno. It was like a trashy Vegas. I accidentally took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up passing the Reno Sheriff's Department which made me extremely excited b/c of the show Reno 911. It did not look the same, at least this one didn't and I did not see any of my favorite characters, perhaps not surprisingly. Reno was fun. Jon won money. I lost about 40 bucks, but I don't think that's too bad since I played slots for a while and some craps and some video poker and got probably $25 in free drinks. Not bad for a night out.

The next morning we left Reno and headed to Lake Tahoe since it was so close and we only had 3 1/2 hours of driving to get to the Bay area. So we detoured and saw the lake. Unfortunately, it was a cold, foggy, rainy day, but we were able to get out and walk around a bit. It's a super cute area and I'd love to go back when the weather is nicer.

After that I took a nap and missed much of the drive through California. Reno had kind of taken it out of me. I dropped Jon off at his place in Mountain View (south of Palo Alto) and then drove up Hwy 101 through San Francisco and across the Bay into Berkeley. This last picture is of the Bay Bridge (not to be confused with the Golden Gate.) It doesn't look like this if you are going FROM Berkeley TO San Francisco, but since it's two layers, this way is covered by the West bound lanes.