Trip to Reno, Lake Tahoe & Yosemite National Park

20th May 2007, Sunday
Chiat and I were determined to wake up at 7am, get the car and set off early to Reno and reach there in the afternoon but in the end, we woke up at 9 and set off at 11 :P. Anyway no stress I guess since we are not rushing to catch a show. The journey was very very very long, maybe nearly 5 hours. We passed many road that had "snow tyres needed!" but thankfully this is late spring time and all the ice has melted. I heard from Kenneth that a car can only go at 30miles per hour with snow tyres vs 60-70miles/hr without so their journey to snowboard must have taken a really long time. Of course it helps to have more people driving!

Reno has not changed very much since I last saw it in 1999. There are more casinos but it is still not as glitzy as the Las Vegas Strip. Besides the casino area, the rest of the city is relatively undeveloped. This is probably because the area does not solely depend on casino revenue as there is also skiing in the winter season. We checked into Peppermill, which I associate with garish deco and tons of jackpots and got a room in the Montenegro Bay wing. I tell you hor...this wing has the cheapest rooms (~$50 a night) as it is such a detour away from the main casino grounds. In fact, this wing is where the old Peppermill was located.

After exploring the Atlantis (another garish casino), Chiat and I had dinner @ the Island Buffett in our hotel. It was seriously not great for $17 but there was a big spread of food. At first I thought there were many cheesecakes on display but was disappointed when most of the cakes were actually sponge based :(. Most of the desserts sucked but anyway, we tried almost all of them till we were so full that we couldn't walk.


Feeling Greedy!

When we finally gave up stuffing ourselves, we took a walk around the strip. Nothing too fancy, except for the new Silver Legacy hotel that was quite high class. We just went casino hopping for the rest of the night. I was pretty bothered by the cigarette smoke so our stay at each casino was not too long. I tried my hand at a 1cent jackpot back at the Peppermill and promptly lost $1. Luckily, it is only $1, imagine if I had played $100 on a $1 jackpot!!


The Most Typical Photo of Reno

21st May 2007, Monday
Before setting off for Tahoe, we dropped by Raley's to get some Blackcurrant wine!!! Yummy! Didn't drink it so soon though :P. We had lots of time to kill after checking out so we went to explore some mini theme park near Sparks. Over there, we did some bowling (yay chiat got above 100 points) and played two rounds of mini golf. I think my putting skills, though improved, are still not up to par with the average mini golf player. I like the deco of the mini golf place. There are always these houses in which you have to hit the ball really hard in order to get the golf ball into some small flap that will put your ball on the most accurate path towards the hole! I think I had some beginner's luck because I felt I played worse in the second round although the course was relatively the same.



We then took a leisurely drive out of the Reno area into Tahoe and had to pass by Mt Rose 9000 ft. Our journey took us almost the summit of Mt Rose (where you can see the ski lifts, pity, most ice melted and there was brown sludge everywhere), where we stopped to admire the scenery of both Reno and Lake Tahoe. After some distance, the car's brakes started to smell burnt and we stopped to rest at a detour in the road. There were many giant acorns in the area, some nearly as big as a small durian.


I took over the driving and we got lost at some funny slope place with many nice houses....nice place to go prospecting for real estate. We finally reached the Lake area and followed the road around the lake. Chiat got very snap happy since Lake Tahoe is crystal clear and simply beautiful on a sunny day! We also noted that the area we were in was at quite a high altitude since the bag of 乖乖 snacks had inflated to quite a gigantic size (remember your physics and pressure calculations?)


After more than an hour of driving, we reached Stateline NV/CA where all the casinos stop just a couple of feet from the CA border since casinos are not allowed in CA. Our hotel, the 3 Peaks Resort was there. I must simply recommend eating at the Harrah's Forest Buffet. Excellent spread of food, good service and great desserts. Chiat and I stuffed ourselves silly on this one. They had 4 types of cheesecake. Now you know why we were so happy! :D

We took a walk around some casinos in the area like Montbleu (I must say, quite classy!) as well as Harvey's which is owed by Harrah's. I am particularly put off by the smoke @ Harvey's. Also, they did not have my favorite jackpot. The one with all the cowboy sevens so I spent forever trying to find one in vain. It was almost 8:30pm when the sun set. We rushed to the shoreline and just managed to get a photo of the sunset.


22nd May 2007, Tuesday
Oopsy we overslept and missed the sunrise. Yet again, we got snap happy @ the Lake Tahoe shoreline. I wonder what this place is like in summer. Maybe there are lots of kids running around in swimsuits? There was even a playground there in which Chiat and I shamelessly had some fun with the swings and the 3m high metal slide.

Loong loonnnnnnnnnngggggg drive began to Yosemite. But not without first getting lost trying to get out of Lake Tahoe. I must say that mapquest gives crappy directions sometimes. Several detours on Tramway Drive brought us to an area that had quite a breathtaking view of the lake. The Ridge Resort @ Tahoe seems to be a really nice place to stay at....maybe when we have more money...Our drive also brought us past this really hot desert/savanna-like area where we stopped for lunch. That's where I took over the driving and we went on a quite thrilling drive past the Mono Lake (really really blue) and up and down various sections of mountains.


Finally, we reached the Yosemite area and were happy to observe that the toll booth was closed for the day :). The landscape changed quite a bit from the desert environment to something with more lush vegetation. There was still snow on the ground that was melting and boy, we were glad they had finished clearing the snow from the Tioga pass. This pass brought us to Olmsted point, where we got to see the main landmark of Yosemite - the Half Dome. So what's the obsession with the Half Dome? It is quite unique in that it is literally like someone/something cut a normal granite mountain into half. We even got a glimpse of people using cables to climb up the Half Dome. That must be quite dangerous! Too bad we didn't have much time in the area or else we might have tried going on some of the hiking trails.

After completing most of the Tioga pass, we made our way to Mariposa. This is supposedly the biggest town in the entire county and it was quite a disappointment as it was really really small. And the problem with small towns is that EVERYTHING is expensive. Our hotel is like $90 a night and it is at best a motel. Even the grocery store is quite small and rather run down. We settled on Burger King for dinner (sad right?) but I think, better than being ripped off. The rest of the night was spent at Best Value Inn, where we watched Dancing with the Stars (simply amazing!), pigged out on Macadamia flavoured Haagen Dazs ice-cream and continued sorting pictures for a jigsaw puzzle.

23rd May 2007, Wednesday
I drove and the journey into Yosemite proved to be longer than expected. Mariposa is about one hour from the toll booth for Yosemite and mountain roads make it difficult for people to speed, not to mention one very big detour in which both sides of the road are sharing one road because of a recent landslide. This time, we had to pay a toll :( but found out that it is actually a ticket that grants admission for one week.

Bridal Veil Falls: There was a short walk into the falls and do beware of slippery rocks. The falls are quite spectacular due to their height. Watch for the spray coming out from the falls because the water is falling at a great velocity.


Glacier Point: Horribly long drive with windy roads and scary oncoming vehicles (didn't help that the road was so narrow that the car overlapped onto the other side of the road). Some of the observation points had humongous tour buses and tons of tourists from China who were TOTALLY oblivious to the presence of cars. Hey guys, wanna get knocked down? There was this guy in an orange jacket (probably a rich chinese guy) who was standing at the back of our car when we wanted to back out. He stood there for such a long time that Chiat had to go ask him to move away. We finally reached our destination after more than 2h on the road. It was worth it though. Panoramic view of the entire park. It makes me wish I had more money to stay at a nice hotel within the park (that costs $250 a night) and we would then have the time to take a hike around the area.

Looks like I actually hiked up there to get a picture huh? :P

We had to skip viewing the Yosemite falls due to the lack of time and promptly made our way back to Stanford. The car was running low on gas but gas prices inside Yosemite are like $4.25 a gallon (daylight robbery!). After missing 2 other gas stations (because there were too many cars/overshoot the place on highway), I was getting really worried that our car would just stop in the middle of the road on an ulu stretch of highway and we would then not be able to do anything! Luckily, we reached Planada (another really ulu farming place), where we topped up at an ancient gas station and got some Mexican food for lunch. The burrito was yummy and had lots of Tabasco sauce!

I had a craving for Dim Sum but had no time to go to SF so we decided to try out Lun Wah. It's in Cupertino and has Dim Sum all day. The food was not bad and cost about $25 for two plus we had a lot of leftovers that became another meal :).