Reno - Day 5, the trip home

Sorry, photos will be posted sometime tonight. :(

We sure had a lot of fun in Reno, but it's always nice to come home. The day started with a nice buffet breakfast, gassed up the cars, then hit the road a few minutes before Noon. What a beautiful drive home! Only a few clouds and according to our car, the outside temp ranged from 58 to 72. Sunglasses all the way home. This time we knew how far we could drive before needing to fill up, so we only had to stop once for gas, in Grants Pass, which is about 6 hours out of Reno and 4 hours from home. We also drove it in one day instead of two. Made for a very long day, but that worked out better.

Once again the kids were amazingly great! No fussing, no crying, no real problems at all. The only things that came up were the usual ones that come up when they are tired and ready for a nap. They had fun watching dvd's, and Riley again played Playstation for close to two hours. Maddie took about a two hour nap from 1:30 - 3:30pm, and Riley crashed for about an hour and a half right after gassing up and getting some quick dinner in Grants Pass. The whole trip home took us a little over 10 hours getting in at 10:15pm. When we got gas in Grants Pass I did a quick calculation of our gas mileage - we were getting 26.64 miles/gallon! Not bad for a SUV. We really like our Honda Pilot a lot. :)

Coming back on hwy 44 is the Bogard Rest Area. On Saturday night it snowed there - snowed a lot!! I was watching the web cams all the time to see how the roads were and 44 was covered. But just as the weather had predicted, it was all gone by the time we went through. Whew! We did notice that rest stop is at 5600 feet. I'm sure we went even higher and was a little surprised there wasn't any kind of marker for the highest point - I think it was probably close to 6000 feet. There was a tiny bit of snow at the rest stop and I got some pictures of Riley & Maddie playing with it.

One worry about this route is it's only two lanes and it takes about 3.5 - 4 hours to get through - if you don't get stuck behind a truck or some idiot going really slow. We did get stuck behind a truck for awhile, but he was empty and going at least 60 usually 65, so that was ok (he must have been empty). At one point there's a big uphill where we did slow down to about 40 because of the truck, but at soon a he could pull over onto the shoulder he did and let us go by. Nice guy, we waved thanks as we drove by. Only one other time did we get behind someone really slow and they turned off to let us go by. We made it to I-5 in 3 hours 45 minutes.

Once on I-5 we really didn't have any problems. For most of the way in California the speed was 70 so we were doing 75 until we hit the border. And there were lots of places where we had to slow down because the corners were just a tad too sharp for that speed. One fun thing though. We started up a big hill to the Oregon border. It was probably a 6% grade. I had it in cruise control. When we hit that hill the cruise control kicked it up a gear or two and kept the car right at 70 without any problems! That was cool! I'm sure some people are saying, "Huh? What's so cool about that?" Well, I'm old enough to remember the early cruise controls and going up hills like this they couldn't handle and you'd either have to turn it off or press on the gas yourself. And maybe I just impress easily. ;)

When we got home, Marci took sleeping Maddie upstairs to put her to bed, though she did wake up when she took her out of the car, but she got her back to sleep quickly. We had a FANTASTIC guy watching our animals while we were gone. Three times he called us, twice with questions and once on the way home to make sure our plans hadn't changed and to see if we needed him to visit the animals one more time. A really great guy!! We put the birds in their cages and told him he could leave the dogs outside during the day and inside at night, we setup an area for them. When we got home they dogs were inside and VERY happy to see us. Riley was also happy to see them and spent about 30 minutes playing with them. The birds were at the cage door ready to get out - they are usually only in their cages during the work day, so this was a long time for them. I brought everything in, got everything settled, took bags upstairs (unpacking will be done tonight), got the kids to bed, then crashed around midnight, only to get up at 5am for work. Note to self: Next time take the NEXT day off too! haha

All in all, it was a great trip, we had a fantastic time, won lots of stuffed animals, got Riley some other fun things, Marci had a great visit with her Mom, and now we know what it's like so next time we'll be ready and have even more fun! But it is nice to be back home in our own beds. :)