Day 11 Ketchum to Reno

Day 11

June 1st, 2012

Ketchum, ID to Reno, NV

RENO or Bust!

Morning started out with a lovely bike ride to town. Ali rode into town to send a few more postcards and check out downtown Ketchum one last time. Turns out nothing in that town opens before 9am...so my journey at 8:16am was rather desolate.

As Ali approached the condo to put the bikes back she could smell bacon from at least a ½ mile away. Kyle was up and at ‘em cooking up the rest of the bacon. mmmm....bacon.

We cleaned up the house, loaded the car with all the leftover food we had made and said goodbye to the Village at Greyhawk. Again- THANKS to the Beyer family for letting us stay there! 

Drive highlights:

Can't really call this picture a highlight.  It's on the not-top-ten pics of the trip, but yes this is what Northern Nevada looks like.

-       Within the first hour of the drive Ali awarded the trip’s Worst Driver Award to none other than a guy driving a mini van from Missouri. We were on the 93 South which is a one lane road for the majority. This minivan and Helga were stuck behind a big truck going about 60. There is a sign that says “passing lane in ½ mile.” So Ali doesn’t get to bummed about the low speed and just waits for the passing lane. The lane approaches and she sees the minivan pull over to the left; not on to the passing lane, but all the way over to the oncoming traffic lane over the double yellow line. Completely unnecessary since a passing lane was just provided. He’s lucky he did not get taken out by a Mack truck. We quickly passed the minivan so we didn’t have to deal with anymore of his malarkey.

Nevada! Two for two on not-top-ten pics! Woooo

Someone needs to talk to the state government of Nevada and tell them they need to work on their "Welcome to Nevada" sign. Just because we were not entering the conventional way (route through Las Vegas) does not mean we don't deserve a warm and colorful welcome! Couldn't even spare us a penny slot casino?

Ali broke the speed high clocking in at 93mph. As soon as we switched, Kyle quickly stole the record back by going 94mph. Boys will be boys. This dangerous competition was then ended for the sake of abiding by the law. Kyle won.  First California plate spotted in Yellowstone, now the Speed Record.  *noted*

 Speaking of 94 – that was the temperature during the majority of our drive through Nevada. We actually hit 98 degrees for a few minutes so we had to obey the rule we had created... play a 98 degrees song. NOOOOOO!!!!

    Since neither of us had any on our iPods (shocking) we had to YouTube a song of theirs. The first hit was the song “Heat it Up.” Seemed appropriate. Turned it on and… Kyle recognized the beginning.  It's one of the hits from NOW 3.  After a few choruses, Kyle started dancin' and singing along to make the best of it.  Luckily, the rule only stated we had to listen to one song....and the only audience was Ali and the Nevada desert.

        We passed an intense high security prison. There was a sign on the freeway that said “Within 10 miles of a maximum security prison – hitchhiking prohibited." That’s fine. We weren’t planning on giving any convicts a ride. Only cause there’s no room in the back seat.

-       We missed Shawn Devilla and his amazing roadtrip DJ skills. Satelite radio is great and all but…. Kyle’s NPR tolerance is much lower than Ali’s and we both swear that everyone 5 times we changed the channel the same 3 Adele songs were on the goddamn radio. ADELE is following us everywhere. This was confirmed when Ali was reading TIME magazine’s “100 most Influential People” article and they featured Adele saying, “Turn on any radio station in the world and you’ll probably hear Adele. Go to Mars right now and I’m pretty sure if there is life on that planet, they’re playing Adele.” Anyways, shoutout to DJ Deezy. We miss you.

-       The drive through northern Nevada was so uneventful that Kyle took his first nap. 

    Since Ali knows NPR would have put Kyle to sleep anyways, she snagged this precious hour to listen to some nerdy Satellite stations. After about 45 mins, she was sick of hearing that the Facebook IPO has disappointed everyone. I get it... I get it, invest in Myspace.

RENO

Pop quiz: 

Guess who this is?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

SARNOW!

 Could recognize that hair flip from miles away.

Wazzzzzup Sarnow. We pulled into Sarnow driveway and were greeted by him and his lovely parents Mrs. Arnow and Jarnow. There house is up in the hills only about 30 mins from the California border.

 

We got to catch up with Sarnow, throw the frizzzzz for a bit, and then were treated to an absolutely delicious dinner – grill and chill style.

Jarnow grillin' 

Jarnow chillin'

 

During dinner we got to see a pretty impressive sunset from the Arnow’s back balcony. Check it out – Nevada provided some serious competition with the Cali sunsets.

Oh and Shawn showed up for a bit. 

Nice button-down Mr. Banker.  
Put some Rogaine on that chest and get back to me.

Then to top off what was already a great night – all three of us went on a night hike about 1.5 miles up to the top of a hill behind Sarnow’s house. We could see out over all of Reno from there.

After chatting about the good old days at Cate we looked down at the city center and realized there were fireworks going off outside the casinos. Pretty sweet timing.

Driving stats: 
Miles: 542 miles
Horrible drivers sighted: 1
Total mileage: 3674
MPG for Ketchum to Reno: 44.8

=