We Are Home

Sunday October 22, 2017- Travel Day 79

The weather was again cool this morning. Home is 228 mile away. We are going for it! As we travel west Jil asks when are we to reach Winnemucca (7100 souls). I reply “we passed it 20 minutes ago!” Electronic device overdose strikes again as Jil had her head buried in her smart phone. Winnemucca is named after Chief Winnemucca, a local Paiute chief. The chief’s daughter, Sarah wrote the first autobiography in 1883 by an American Indian woman. It has been described as “one of the most enduring ethno-historical books ever written by an American Indian. For you history buffs, Butch Cassidy’s gang robbed the First National Bank of $32,640 in 1900. The area also has a deep Basque sheep herding history which is celebrated by an annual Basque Festival.

We stop in Lovelock (1800 souls) and visit the park with a zillion “love locks”. People are invited to add a padlock to the chains provided to celebrate their love. We travel through the Lahonton Valley which the 1850’s emigrants called the “40 Mile Desert”. This forsaken area not only did not provide fodder for their livestock but had no source of usable water. Next comes Fernley (19,000 souls). This town is another place that did not exist before the Southern Pacific Railroad  built a siding there. Agriculture and ranching helped develop the area with a little help from an irrigation system and drainage system developed in the early 1900’s.

From Fernley Interstate 80 heads towards the Truckee River Canyon towards home. The canyon is full of fall color, something that we missed while in the Midwest. It seems that fall reluctant to come while we were there. Traffic gets a little heavier as we approach Sparks, then downtown Reno. We live five miles west of downtown in the foothills east of the mighty Sierra Nevada Range. A few minutes later we pull up in front of our home.

After ten and a half weeks on the road we come home to friendly neighbors and fair weather. Our home is as we left it thanks to friends who occupy it while we are away. There’s nothing to do but unpack the rig, clean it inside and out and take her to the the RV storage yard. Sounds easy but giving the coach a good scrub takes a couple of days of hard work, and at my age it’s getting a little harder.

We attempt to mouse proof the inside of the coach by removing anything they might like to eat or use to build a nest so almost every item is removed and stored in our house. Try removing almost everything that’s not tied down from your refer, every cabinet, drawer, and closet, then shampoo the carpets, clean the inside of the refer. We also have to winterized the water system, air up the tires and check to make sure all the outside joints are properly caulked so there are no water leaks. The cargo bays are emptied and cleaned, the entire outside of the coach is given a good scrub. Now we can take it to the RV storage yard for the winter or until we travel once again.

Our trip to the Midwest and the Great Lakes was one to remember. We learned a lot from the folks that live there, saw so many things new to us that we already are having difficulty recalling them all. Luckily our cameras recorded the most important images and we refer to them often. This blog is also designed to record our experiences for posterity and as a memory jogger. The last entry will be a recap of our trip.