post dated

This post is not actually being posted when it happened (4-6 June). Right now, I am secretly in Reno, Nevada.

"Ne-vă-da! Short A!" -Mike

I don't even know where to start with this. Mike had an interview in Reno and decided to fly into San Francisco and make a trip of it, and talk me into joining him, mostly by promising me redwood trees. Twist my arm, will you. It worked.

EPIC.

We landed in San Francisco and got on the road about 10AM local time. We'd already been awake for 11 hours at this point, with all of the adventures ahead of us still. Excellent. We wandered around Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39, acquiring caffeine and Ranier cherries and checking out the sea lions.

Drove up and down Lombard Street. Drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. Glorious.

At my dad's good recommendation, we stopped in Golden Gate National Recreation Area and drove up the windy, windy (one of those was weather and one of those was the adjective describing the not straight roads) road to an awesome vista of the bridge, the bay and the Pacific Ocean. The clouds even lifted for about thirty seconds of ridiculous scrambling to take pictures.

Next on the docket was an important, life-altering, beautiful thing. Tree of the day: Muir Woods. Because I was secretly on this trip, I couldn't tell anyone that this was happening AND IT WAS KILLING ME. I offered this on facebook in hopes that the few people in the loop would share my joy, but... REDWOOD TREES... and I couldn't tell anyone. It's like nothing I've ever seen. They're just so tall, and... tall. So tall. My mind was blown by one that was measured and determined to be as old as the United States. This 236 year old tree just seemed so tiny, because others around it were hundreds more years old. Just stunning.

Sadly, I had to leave that place because we did need to eventually make it to Reno. Driving on I-80 in this part of the country is very different than at home in NJ. We drove through Tahoe National Forest and into the Sierras after a brief stop for lunch in the Napa Valley. We noticed it was getting chillier as we drove up, and were shocked/ amused by the signs we passed announcing the elevation (for two kids who grew up at sea level, one of whom had not left the time zone before in his life? It was kind of awesome.)

We continued to ascend until we reached Donner Pass, which was kind of mind blowing to see in real life when I'd mostly only known it through the Oregon Trail computer game. I can imagine how one would get stranded there in the spring or fall, given that we were there in JUNE and there had been several inches of snow that morning. Out of the ordinary, for sure, but it still happened. In fact, it was so unusual that a news team was parked at the rest area where Mike and I stopped to have a snowball fight... and then they interviewed us for the evening news.

Reno itself was very interesting, just a big empty town in the middle of mountains and desert. We stayed at a casino just a few miles from his interview, just absolutely passing out after a full day (and a half, when you consider travel time and time change!) of adventures. The next morning we drove around town a little bit to kill time before Mike's interview, which went really, really well.

We celebrated at Great Basin Brewpub in Sparks (which is basically just the other, slightly-nicer half of Reno). Great food-- jalapeno wonton poppers? We need to figure out how to make those at home. But the beer was also really good. We tried samples of just about everything they had on tap, some better than others. The Cerveza Chilebeso (chili kiss beer) was pretty awesomely done, but we were most impressed with the Ichthyosaur IPA, also known as Icky. In fact, we brought a six pack home with which to celebrate whenever he would eventually get his first full time teaching job.

The rest of the trip was kind of hurry-- we didn't really leave much time for wandering off the beaten path, but we woke up early enough to see dawn in the Sierras (gorgeous, and now we more fully understand what "purple mountain majesties" means) and head back to San Francisco via Lake Tahoe, which was REALLY chilly for it being June. Beautiful though.

Cool trip. I loved seeing a part of the country that I had never seen anything like before. Also cool was finding out when we landed in Philly that he passed the first round interview and was eligible for hire in Washoe County, NV... except, we now know what would come of that... but it gives me a new place to visit in less than two weeks!