450 miles in the desert and 50 miles in snow

After Las Vegas our next destination was San Francisco. The distance between the two cities is though too big for a one-day drive, so we reserved us a hotel room in Reno. It’s familiarly known as ‘The largest little city in the world’ and as poor man’s Vegas. As we didn’t have breakfast at the hotel in LV we drove a bit outside the city center to a Food4Less supermarket to crab something to eat. We all took a 3 sandwiches bag because those sandwiches were stuffed with meat, cheese and veggies. We were aware of the fact that there are literally no towns between Vegas and Reno so the possibilities to find food on the way were pretty limited. Besides the sandwiches we had some chocolate bars and lots of water. The weather was luckily very good again, the sun was shining and it was quite warm.

Although the drive was long, the fact that we’ve got 4 possible drivers makes it a lot easier. We divided the drive into three sections me being the first driver. I must admit that it’s pretty boring to drive through the desert.. On those 150 miles there were about 7 little curves in total :) so it’s just straightforward the whole time. Although the 3 villages we drove by were very little, there was a McDonald’s in one of them in which we stopped by to have some coffee.. After 8 hours in total we arrived in Reno. The first thing what happened to us there was pretty funny! First we saw some flashing light behind us, so we pulled over and the officer walked to our car.. In our opinions we didn’t do anything illegal so we were pretty amazed. The local sheriff had somehow noticed that we weren’t locals there and wanted to have a chat with us. He asked from where we were coming and where we were going. He also offered his help if we wanted to have driving directions or any other questions about Reno.. The hospitality is awesome here :) After the long drive we were quite tired and didn’t have any energy to walk around the city. We just ate at a Mexican place and went back to the hotel to watch TV and surf in the internet for the first time in 3 days..

The next morning we continued right away towards California and San Francisco. We planned on taking a detour at the Tahoe National Park but due to bad weather we skipped this plan. After the desert the day before, during the National Park leg we confronted almost one-meter high snow banks next to the freeway. The road itself was in good shape and the weather was not below 0° degrees so it wasn’t icy or frosty. The landscape looked pretty much like it is in the Alps during fall. We had to stay over 30 minutes in a queue as a truck had crashed and one lane needed to be closed from traffic. The closer we got to SF, the warmer became the weather and in Frisco it was almost 20° degrees once we got there.. It can be stated that the weather conditions have changed enormously in the past 24 hours. First a hour-long drive in the desert, couple of hours in snow on the mountains and now almost summery conditions at the verdant Pacific coast :)

In SF we had first some difficulties in finding our hotel but once we managed to find it we were pleasantly surprised. We didn’t expect it to be this good! Our room is very big and we thought we wouldn’t get any breakfast but we’ll get a really good one. Actually it’s the best breakfast what we’ve gotten at our hotels so far! After check-in we continued to SF city center to have a look at it and to find a Thai restaurant Matti found on the internet earlier. We found the restaurant easily but finding a parking spot seemed to be harder than anywhere else. We drove at least a half a hour around the blocks before we managed to find a free spot. The restaurant itself was okay, the food was cheap and tasted fine but the dishes weren’t spicy as they should’ve been.. Maybe we looked too foreign for them that they didn’t wanna spice up too much.