I woke up to a little bit of light coming through my windows, and found myself absolutely freezing, quite literally. The condensation on my back window had frozen into a sheet of ice! I groggily sat myself up, curious as to what time it was, since I had my alarm set for 6 but I wasn’t opposed to getting started a bit sooner. It was only once I checked my phone and realized it was actually midnight that I started to get a bit confused. It turned out, it wasn’t early morning at all, it was just the first clear night I’d had since the trip started and the moonlight was what I was seeing.
I grabbed a sleeping bag from the back of the car and used it as a sort of second blanket, which helped a lot with the cold, and I quickly fell back asleep. I woke up again 6 hours later to the actual morning, which was just as cold as the middle of the night, but with more sunlight. I ran through my regular morning camping routine and packed everything away into the trunk, brushed my teeth, had a snack (I still had some of these breakfast crackers I got from the motel in Eugene), and got dressed.
Once I opened my door, I realized I had a visitor in the night: a coyote! I had been hearing them throughout the night but didn’t think much of it. But it seems one had gotten curious about the car in the night and had walked right past.
Camping in the desert does have it’s positives though, the views are incredible:
My first order of business was to go to the Nevada capitol building in Carson City, only an hour or so away. It was a quick and easy drive, though driving through Reno only amplified my hatred for major US highways. They’re so busy and everything moves so fast, and everyone only cares about themselves.
I got to the capitol building around 8:30 am, and there was some convenient free parking just a block away which is always good, and not something you can count on everywhere. Given the time, there weren’t many people around who I could ask to take a photo of me, but I did find a student group of some sort in fancy suits that were more than happy to take the photo for me.
The next order of business was to try and make it to Sacramento, the capital of California. Despite only being a few hours drive, it would prove to not be as easy as initially thought. As I started up highway 50 towards Lake Tahoe, I was almost immediately met with an overhead sign saying that chains were required. There was a parking lot conveniently right there, which I was able to pull into to do some further research.
I took a look at the Caltrans quickmap (a fantastic resource, by the way) which showed basically every road to Sacramento facing the same fate: chains (and snow tires) or 4WD required. A Nevada Highway Patrol agent was parked in the same parking lot as me, so I figured I’d ask her if she had any advice on where to go. Her advice was basically what I expected: don’t go anywhere, but she did give me an important tidbit of information by telling me the chain restrictions are normal for this time of day, and as it warms up today it should be lifted within a few hours.
Given this information, I figured I’d head back into Carson City, pick up a postcard and some fairy lights for inside my car (a suggestion from a friend), and wait out the restrictions from a cafe. I ended up at a Starbucks, as I figured they wouldn’t mind me hanging out for a while as I waited, compared to a smaller cafe that may want me to make room for others.
After a bit of waiting at Starbucks, I headed back towards a gift shop I’d seen earlier right next to the Carson City Railway Museum (which was unfortunately closed). The interesting thing is that this gift shop was also the chamber of commerce, which I felt was an oddly small building for a city of this size. Regardless, I was able to pick up a postcard and had a nice conversation with the staff member there who checked the road conditions again for me and let me know that it was now good to go! I could now, finally (after about 2 hours), make my way to Sacramento.
I made my way up highway 50, which was full of tight turns, steep hills, and missing lane lines, all the way to Lake Tahoe, where I stopped in South Lake Tahoe to take some photos and fill up my washer fluid. I’ve noticed my wiper fluid only seems to spray onto the bottom half of my windshield, which kind of sucks. I thought it was just running low, but when I went to fill it up it only took a little bit before overflowing. So I think it may be an issue with the pump, which is annoying.
Rather than trying to park in downtown Sacramento, I parked at the Watt/I-80 light rail station along the Gold line and took the light rail system into downtown. The ticket system is a little antiquated, and still uses paper tickets, but they seem to be in the process of upgrading to contactless payments across the network starting in the downtown core.
My stop was only a minute or two walk from the capitol building, which was nice. I was able to quickly find someone to take a photo of me with my phone, but quickly realized something particularly disheartening: I had forgotten the instant camera in my car. This wasn’t a horrible issue, as I’ll be coming back past Sacramento tomorrow anyway, but still a major annoyance that could have easily been avoided.
Regardless, I was still able to enjoy the majesty of the California Capitol Building, which is so far my favourite one. Though I may have been swayed a bit by the warmth of the sun and the presence of palm trees.
The guy who took my photo also took a couple of pretty fantastic photos of himself, which I feel compelled to share.
I hopped back on the light rail and headed back to the car. I found that it was a pretty good spot to play Pokemon GO, since all the stations had gyms at them that I could just drop my Pokemon into as we passed. Efficiency!
The last destination for tonight was Grass Valley, about an hour north of Sacramento, where some family friends live who I haven’t seen in over 10 years. The drive to their house was at first, not very nice, as it followed congested highways and lots of stop and go traffic, but once I got off the highway and onto the rural roads, it was one of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever taken. It had it all, sweeping hills, gorgeous sunlight, green grass, no traffic, everything you could want.
I arrived around 6:15pm, and we had a nice home cooked meal and talked for a while, before trying to set up the drone to take some photos of the sunset. Unfortunately, the setup process for a DJI drone takes a while, and before we could finish the setup we lost the last of the light, and couldn’t calibrate the drone for its first flight. I probably should have thought about that earlier and done the setup in Carson City, but oh well, there will be more chances to fly.
We hung out and talked for a while longer, played a fun board game called “Evolution”, and called it a night at around midnight.