LVSteve
Member
We drove to Reno last week for something my wife had to do. This left me free to visit the local gun stores and take a nature ramble.
The Driving
Just to give some scale, it is ~430 miles to Reno from my part of Vegas. Once you get past Mercury, you are on two-lane blacktop with occasional truck lanes.
I knew there was a chunk of construction on the normal route near Tonopah, so I chanced a detour through Silverpeak. This is the location of the country's only lithium mining area. Nice road turned into well graded dirt with signs warning of sinkholes.
The road passes between two huge evaporation ponds and eventually reaches a collection of trailers and odd looking buildings. This is Silverpeak. Didn't see a store or gas station, which I found interesting given how far it is to Tonopah. Good thing my Merc ML diesel has a 25 gallon tank.
Got back on the main route only to find after 30 minutes that I had caught up with a convoy jammed up behind an oversize load with lead and follow cars. Now, Nevada law requires that you move over when the line gets too long. These zeebs hadn't got the memo, carrying on past two pull off areas. Some of the passing maneuvers we observed beggared belief, and it wasn't just cars drivers. A couple of 18-wheeler drivers obviously got the red mist.
If that wasn't bad enough, passing was made doubly dangerous by multiple drivers not using their headlights in areas where state law, and damned great signs, require it. Headlights really do make a difference on the straight, open roads here where it is often difficult to judge the distance of oncoming vehicles in the heat mirage. I don't recall people being this dumb in past years. I blame LED DRLs to a degree, some people thinking they are enough. They're not. On the trip back one joker in a Rodeo with no lights nearly caught me out.
Reno Gun Store
Stayed at the Grand Sierra Resort. Nice rooms, but the so-called advanced elevator system to reduce wait times was a royal PITA. It was nice to hit a buffet again, but at over $40 a head it wasn't cheap. It might have been because it was crab legs night.
Liked the selection of gun stores, but prices were all over the map. Sometimes new modern stuff was at halfway sensible prices, but in the next store prices would be insane. All milsurp stuff was priced high to low earth orbit.
I did make one score, an ANIB 2023 SCCY CPX-2. Apparently it came out of some estate and the store just wanted it gone. It's the new model with the square slide but no optic cut. At $81 OTD I couldn't say no.
Reno in general
Traffic wasn't too bad, but then again school is out and I wasn't hitting rush hour. The smaller size of the city kept catching me out when it came to driving about. I kept overshooting my destinations. Guess I've lived in Vegas too long, lol.
The city is overrun with homeless, which came as a surprise. How do they survive the winter up there? Was told of one place right near the resort to avoid after dark, the big Walmart across the street. One of the gun store clerks said, "Welcome to East Sacramento! We just call it Reno for short" Ouch!
Took a nature hike around the Virginia Lake, another place to avoid after dark. Photographed some neat dragonflies, a turtle, and some Black Crowned Night Herons. The Herons were surprisingly cooperative when it came to getting pictures. I'll have to post a couple. There are fish in the lake. One guy showed me a picture of a 17 lb carp he had caught earlier in the day. That explained a couple of big swirls I saw in the water.
The homeless we all around the lake, some on benches, some with shopping carts, and the odd wanderer muttering to themselves. Sad to see.
The Ride Home
The trip home went great except for work in Tonopah that the NVRoads website was suspended at weekends. They lied. Also, between Goldfield and Mercury there were some monster areas of wildfire smoke. The recirc function on the SUV got some heavy use.
I've yet to refill the tank, but the fill in Reno came back as 27.6 mpg. Pretty good for averaging 60 mph getting up there.
The Driving
Just to give some scale, it is ~430 miles to Reno from my part of Vegas. Once you get past Mercury, you are on two-lane blacktop with occasional truck lanes.
I knew there was a chunk of construction on the normal route near Tonopah, so I chanced a detour through Silverpeak. This is the location of the country's only lithium mining area. Nice road turned into well graded dirt with signs warning of sinkholes.
The road passes between two huge evaporation ponds and eventually reaches a collection of trailers and odd looking buildings. This is Silverpeak. Didn't see a store or gas station, which I found interesting given how far it is to Tonopah. Good thing my Merc ML diesel has a 25 gallon tank.Got back on the main route only to find after 30 minutes that I had caught up with a convoy jammed up behind an oversize load with lead and follow cars. Now, Nevada law requires that you move over when the line gets too long. These zeebs hadn't got the memo, carrying on past two pull off areas. Some of the passing maneuvers we observed beggared belief, and it wasn't just cars drivers. A couple of 18-wheeler drivers obviously got the red mist.
If that wasn't bad enough, passing was made doubly dangerous by multiple drivers not using their headlights in areas where state law, and damned great signs, require it. Headlights really do make a difference on the straight, open roads here where it is often difficult to judge the distance of oncoming vehicles in the heat mirage. I don't recall people being this dumb in past years. I blame LED DRLs to a degree, some people thinking they are enough. They're not. On the trip back one joker in a Rodeo with no lights nearly caught me out.
Reno Gun Store
Stayed at the Grand Sierra Resort. Nice rooms, but the so-called advanced elevator system to reduce wait times was a royal PITA. It was nice to hit a buffet again, but at over $40 a head it wasn't cheap. It might have been because it was crab legs night.
Liked the selection of gun stores, but prices were all over the map. Sometimes new modern stuff was at halfway sensible prices, but in the next store prices would be insane. All milsurp stuff was priced high to low earth orbit.
I did make one score, an ANIB 2023 SCCY CPX-2. Apparently it came out of some estate and the store just wanted it gone. It's the new model with the square slide but no optic cut. At $81 OTD I couldn't say no.Reno in general
Traffic wasn't too bad, but then again school is out and I wasn't hitting rush hour. The smaller size of the city kept catching me out when it came to driving about. I kept overshooting my destinations. Guess I've lived in Vegas too long, lol.
The city is overrun with homeless, which came as a surprise. How do they survive the winter up there? Was told of one place right near the resort to avoid after dark, the big Walmart across the street. One of the gun store clerks said, "Welcome to East Sacramento! We just call it Reno for short" Ouch!
Took a nature hike around the Virginia Lake, another place to avoid after dark. Photographed some neat dragonflies, a turtle, and some Black Crowned Night Herons. The Herons were surprisingly cooperative when it came to getting pictures. I'll have to post a couple. There are fish in the lake. One guy showed me a picture of a 17 lb carp he had caught earlier in the day. That explained a couple of big swirls I saw in the water.
The homeless we all around the lake, some on benches, some with shopping carts, and the odd wanderer muttering to themselves. Sad to see.
The Ride Home
The trip home went great except for work in Tonopah that the NVRoads website was suspended at weekends. They lied. Also, between Goldfield and Mercury there were some monster areas of wildfire smoke. The recirc function on the SUV got some heavy use.
I've yet to refill the tank, but the fill in Reno came back as 27.6 mpg. Pretty good for averaging 60 mph getting up there.
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