Nevada

We have spent the last three days in Nevada - our 47th state! I have a goal of visiting at least one National Park unit in every state. That didn't happen during our time in Nevada, so I hope we visit the southern part of Nevada at some point in the future as I'd love to visit Hoover Dam. The main draw for us this time in Nevada was my Aunt Janet, Ziggy, and two of my cousins. We arrived around 2pm on Wednesday as we cut our time short at Lassen Volcanic because the kids were more interested in having more time with Aunt Janet than doing another hike. We saw Janet's new home in Reno that she moved into about three months ago, which is on the same property as Brent's home. We had dinner on her outside patio. The kids had a blast playing with Ziggy after he came home from daycare. The next day we spent time at her home and also took the kids to an indoor bouldering gym in Reno. The indoor ice-skating rink didn't have any open skating sessions on Thursday. We contemplated doing that on Friday but opted to have more time at Lake Tahoe. We were going to have the kids experience go-karting for the first time in their lives, but we had to provide proof of their age which I didn't have with me and honestly couldn't even have produced if we were at home because I had to mail their birth certificates to the Department of State to get their passports. Eleven of us went out to dinner that night at Mexcal where we ate a variety of tacos and other Mexican food. Oliver tried shrimp for the first time in his life. He liked it although the particular shrimp taco was too spicy for him. I tried something new as well - an al pastor taco which contained pork and pineapples. It was delicious! Robin's youngest daughter had tres de leche cake for dessert whereas most other people at the table had a few churros. My kids definitely liked the churros! Aunt Janet had started a tradition of taking me out for Mexican food once each time we were on Long Island. It was so sweet of her to continue that tradition here in Reno! We drove a total of 53 miles around Reno that day. 

On Friday we packed food for lunch and dinner and headed off to Incline Village, which is where Vanessa and Niko live with their three cats. We ate our lunches at a picnic table near where we began our hike. We hiked part of a trail up to monkey rock, and then we cut across to another trail that took us to Hidden Beach. For Lake Tahoe the water temperature was on the warmer side (62 degrees). Oliver was the only one who wore his bathing suit. He submerged his entire body under water. Ian didn't bring his bathing suit, but he ended up getting all but his head wet. Oliver had brought a change of clothes. Ian hadn't, but his clothes mostly dried off as we hiked back to the SUV, and we threw his clothes in the dryer once we arrived back at Nessa's home. Aunt Janet, Paul, Nadia, and I only got our feet (and in some cases calves) wet.  The boys had fun climbing some large rocks around Lake Tahoe. It's certainly a beautiful lake! We visited the two deepest lakes in North American on this trip - Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is much bigger than Crater Lake although Crater Lake certainly isn't tiny. We had hamburgers, hotdogs, fries, raw veggies, and ice cream sandwiches for dinner. Oliver and Niko also had some shrimp. Nessa and Niko have three indoor cats which created an allergic reaction in most of my family. I gave Ian Benadryl, and Vanessa passed out Claritin to a few others. Aunt Janet drove our SUV a total of 70 miles on Friday. 

I'm so thankful that Aunt Janet was able to move out here to Reno two years ago to be with two of her kids and also her only grandchild. We have missed not being able to spend a week with her on Long Island last year or this year. We certainly won't come out here as often as we went to Long Island as there is a lot more time and money involved in getting here, but the kids are already talking about making future plans to spend a week here. We shall see! Paul and I slept in her guest bedroom. Nadia slept on the couch in her living room. Oliver and Ian slept upstairs on two air mattresses in Brent and Janet's offices. Her home is in the flight path for the Reno airport so that took a little bit of time to get accustomed to. She also has only one bathroom, so it was at times a little challenging for six people to share one bathroom, but her new home is lovely. The first day we were here, I did two loads of laundry which was very helpful. We had packed a combination of shorts and pants for the trip but hardly had any need of wearing the shorts. The weather has been incredible during our trip. The only time we encountered a little rain was while we were in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. The temps have mostly been in the 60's and 70's, and we did experience the 80's a few times on our trip for at least part of a day (such as here in Reno). 

Nadia has done a little bit of work for her General Psychology class on our trip - mostly making comments on the discussion boards. So far, she has a 100% average in the course, although we know she won't be able to maintain that as we opted to have her skip posting in one of the discussion boards as it was about gender. She won't need to do much for the course while we're in San Francisco, but she'll have to get busy again once we're back at home on Thursday. She's been spending a lot of time playing Crossy Road on her Chromebook on this trip. Although we definitely prefer our minivan in general, there are some nice features in our SUV. The kids like that they can plug in devices in the middle row. I like that it has a navigation system that relies on satellite which is most helpful when there isn't any cell service. They also like that it came with Sirius XM radio. We listen to music half of the time and a story the other half of the time. We finished The Ogress and the Orphans (which is 13 hours long) and The Adventures of Hercules Beal on this trip. We also have listened to the 9th season of the Brinkman Adventures. As we drive to San Francisco today, we're going to start Nothing Else but Miracles by Kate Albus.