Day 2: Ho-Hum Day across Nevada

Today's blog is penned by Lyn.

As every Central Californian who has taken a road trip East knows, the second day of the trip is usually spent driving across Nevada. That's how we spent our day. Left Cisco Grove at 10am, arrived Elko 4pm.

But first a few words about Cisco Grove Campground. Very very shady...that part was nice. And it was cool. But being a campground in the high Sierras, the sites were dirt so it was very dusty. Thankfully, we didn't have anyone beside or across from us or it would have been much dustier and their campfire could have been our campfire too since the sites were quite close together. The site was long enough that we didn't have to unhook the Outback. And we had a natural sound machine to sleep by due to the highway noise from I-80. I actually enjoyed that noise...I think it helped Rich sleep good too. Just had one challenging turn getting out of our row of sites...Rich masterfully maneuvered the turn just barely missing a pole on the front left which allowed the right rear wheel of the rig to slip past a 2' granite rock.

Prior to our trip, we've had intermittent whistling noises from our windshield which is caused by the seal having slipped off the windshield for a space of about 6". It was quiet on our first day, but leaving Cisco it started whistling. So we contacted a glass repair shop in Sparks and they said they could look at it and hopefully fix it. Well, their location wasn't conducive to a 40' RV + tow car, so we  kept on going and got back onto I-80. About 30 minutes lost. The windshield Gods shone down on us though and we had a whistle-free 5-hour drive to Elko, with 1 stop at a rest stop and 1 for gas.
Here's a pic of the windshield seal gap.

We're still learning our gas gauge, trying to get a feel for what 1/4 tank really means. Since we've run out of gas in our previous motor homes, I don't want a repeat of that so I'm going to be a gas-nag until we know our gas gauge better. I have 2 gas apps on my phone: Gas Buddy and Trucker Path. Gas Buddy is great for mapping all the gas stations that have diesel and their prices, but it's geared for cars. Trucker Path is geared for trucks....so any locations it maps are big enough for us. Since the gas gauge was at 1/4, I 'convinced' Rich to stop before Elko and pay $20 more. But, it wasn't a flat area, so it didn't fill completely. Now that we're in Elko and have seen a couple other stations, we'll fill it completely to see what kind of mileage we're getting. On one previous round trip to Fresno, we got 7.2 mpg, so hopefully we won't be too far below that on this trip. Tune in tomorrow for results for this trip.

In Elko, we stayed at the Iron Horse RV park...another long pull-thru so no disconnecting needed. However, very very close to the neighbor. In fact, if we had our front left slide out, we could probably  offer them some coffee this morning. But it's a concrete pad with grass in between, so that was nice. Fairly quiet if you don't mind train whistles every few hours.

Rich spent many hours last night researching the route we'll be taking to Thayne, WY today. The first 2/3 of the trip is pretty straightforward: when we get to Wells, NV, we'll head north on 93 to Twin Falls ID and get on the main freeway to Pocatello. But at that point, there are 2 ways to get to Thayne. Google maps indicated road construction so Rich went on Idaho's equivalent of Cal-Trans to get details to help us make that decision when we get there. We're looking forward to staying a couple nights at Thayne (thank you Steve and Carolyn) where we'll make a day trip in the car to Jackson.

You can probably plan to see our latest blog in the mornings. So far we've found that after a long day of driving, and after some wine for me and a beer for Rich, vegging on our couches fits the bill.

Well, it's 8:15 and want to be rolling by 9, so will sign off now. You should be able to now add a comment without having a Google account. Please try it and if you can't comment yet, send us an email or text.

Until tomorrow......