Day 12 Heading Home

I was thinking that was it for our trip but heck the last day was fun too. We left our condo in Jeff & Rachel's hands and hit the road on Wednesday for home. We drove down through Minden and took the highway back through California for a change. This took us through some beautiful scenery down on by Mono Lake and the east side of Yosemite. 

You can see the smokey haze

 There was forest fires going on in the mountains to the east and you sure could tell with all the smoke and haze in the air. We stopped in Lee Vining at our favorite little drive in for lunch.

This was across the street and I just had to take a picture! Wow

 We drove by a sign for this lake. If I remember right it was June Lake. It looked so interesting so we hurried and went over and checked it out. It was such a pretty little spot. Who knew.

 Of course we were looking forward to going to Bishop just so we could go to this Bakery. Ashley had told us all about it and we were primed for pastries. We missed them so much after Solvang! It was awesome. Super crowded but so fun. It was so hard to pick out what we each wanted to get so we each got two. What can I say we knew the vacation was coming to an end and had to drown our sorrows a little.

 Then just to keep things interesting I guess we ventured off the main highway. We took a little road that went over the mountains and ended up just south of Goldfield. It took us forever and was super twisty and turny but very pretty. We climbed and climbed and the road even got down to a single lane at one point. It was pretty amazing.

Seriously one lane through this pretty little canyon.

 So after we got back on Highway 95 heading to Vegas we knew we had to step on it. We were meeting Ashley & Benjy and the boys in Vegas at Cafe Rio so we could take the boys home with us. Ashley had a trip to San Diego with the young women and we babysat the boys for her until Saturday morning.

 Cooper had his first sleepover at Grammy's house and it went alot better this time with Rees there too. He did get very sad on the drive home and went straight to bed a sad boy but he did okay. Of course both boys were up bright and early every morning. They played and played while I search for things to entertain them.

I got out the awesome toys and everything. It went very well but I have to say when Ashley & Benjy came Saturday I was okay with that. I took a three hour nap and still slept well that night. How does she do it!!!

So the big vacation was over. We had a blast and looking back I can't believe how much we did. We didn't run like maniacs all over but we sure packed alot in looking back. It was sad to see Christina go after spending almost two weeks together. We were only alone for a few hours though because Jeff & Rachel came that night to cheer us up.

Day 11 Virginia City

 What a fun day we had checking out Virginia City. It had been 29 years since Mendis & I had been there so we were really looking forward to it. It's this old silver mining town that has been restored and is loaded with tourist stuff like candy shops, ice cream and souvenirs aplenty. I had my spending money all ready to go. It's a good thing because we found a great leather shop where we bought up lots of stuff, purses duffles etc.

What can you say about this!

Jeff is in his happy place...the bank vault!

 After a fun lunch in a packed little shop with dirty tables and treats and shopping we called it a day.

Some of us gave out sooner than others......Rachel crashed.

 We had a great dinner that night at the Chart House. It is high in the mountains but overlooks the lake. Very beautiful and the food was super.

We demolished the hot lava cake.

After dinner we went back to the condo and finished this puzzle with a movie going in the background. We worked on the puzzle off and on and were a little sad when it was finished. It was an action packed day with good food and great company.

Day 10 Lake Tahoe

Sunday we spent just kicking back and enjoying doing nothing all afternoon after gearing up for Monday. We had a lovely day touring Lake Tahoe. Since I had my wallet back life was good again. We headed to the southern end and decided to drive the whole loop. It is just beautiful there so it was a lovely day.

The twisty turny roads were alot of fun!

 

One of the things I really wanted to do after talking to Shannon was to hike down there and see the Vikingsholm castle. It was much further away than it looks in this zoomed in picture. It was cut throat finding a parking spot first and then we found out we didn't have much time until the y closed so we hustled right down for the last tour of the day.

I was already dreading the hike up.

The castle was lovely.

We spent about a half an hour just looking around and enjoying the inside and the courtyard of the castle.

Then it was time for the dreaded climb out of there. It actually took less time than I thought it would and no one had to drag me out of there!

We drove the rest of the way around the lake then we headed out to Carson City to meet up with Jeff & Rachel. We had a great BBQ dinner and took them back up to 11,000 feet to the condo.

Day 8 and 9

On to Tahoe...eventually. I had been battling an eye thing for a few days thanks to allergies I guess and this morning I woke up with swollen eyes that were itching like crazy and burning. So we hit up a walmart on the way out of town to get a rx refilled. Much easier said than done. They wouldn't refill it so I had to call Dr J at home since it was a Saturday and get a new refill. Many phone calls later and an hour wait and I had my drops for a mere $333. SO this rattled me considerably which will help explain my dilemma the next day.
We had a yummy brunch at IHOP and hit the road. When we got to Sacramento I was truly freaking out about the drops being so expensive so we stopped at another walmart to try to return them since they were unopened. No dice so back on the road again. The drive through the trees by Tahoe was lovely. We stopped at the Donner pass museum.

It's hard to believe the snow that year got up to the top of this stack of rock on the monument. Those poor people. It was a sad place to me. We kept on going and never could see the Reno Temple from the freeway but we did see a Cabellas so we had to check that out of course.

That was a fun little stop. By this time we needed to hit the road so we could check in before dark. We had a quick dinner at Reno and headed up to Lake Tahoe. Then we had a heck of a climb straight up a mountain to the resort.

It was beautiful up there at 11,000 feet but man I was winded the whole time. The view of the valley and the Lake was phenomenal. Of course I didn't take any pictures. Maybe I was not thinking clearly from the altitude!

We had tons of room and were only planning on staying for three days so we invited Jeff & Rachel up to spend the rest of the week there. 

The next morning Mendis & I had a time share presentation to attend (so we could get $100 off dinner). That's when I realized I couldn't find my little black metal wallet with my visa, dr license and $100 cash. I used that for my little cross body purse because my regular wallet wouldn't fit my little bag. So I spent the next 24 hours calling everywhere we had been the day before to see if I could find it. Those $333 eye drops had me so rattled I couldn't remember what the heck I did with my wallet after that. We had stopped six times that day so it could be laying in a parking lot anywhere or hopefully in a safe in one of those stores. I had such a pit in my stomach as you can imagine. We looked in the car, twice and no luck. We tore the condo apart, nope no wallet. So the next day when I heard from the last store that they didn't have it  I decided to check the car one last time after saying a prayer first. I got a flashlight app on my phone since it was in a dark garage. So one last look in the car. I sat down on the seat with my trusty flashlight phone and saw it immediately right where you click the seat belt. It just kinda popped right out. It would have been really hard to see without the light which is why both Mendis & I missed it before. So I broke down in tears of gratefulness. Is that a word. Who cares I was truly blessed that I didn't loose that sucker. So it saved the day and the rest of my trip.