Saturday 18th - Sunday 19th March – Leaving California behind

Not for the first time, we were rudely awoken by a sturdy rap on the door from the park warden.  So we reluctantly paid up our $25 for the night. $25 is what the park charge if you use the ‘full hook-up’. Seeing as we didn’t hook up to anything, I can’t help but wonder ‘why the charge?’

I feel the need to try and be a lot healthier in the next few weeks before our next guests join us.  I can feel the eating out and extra drinking of the last couple of weeks catching up with me.  So I treated myself to a short indoors workout before going for a walk in the snow.  Well, I tried walking on the snow but now understand why everyone around here wears skis or snow-shoes!  I don’t think I have ever tried to walk on snow this deep.  So, in the end I had to stick to the tarmac which didn’t lead me anywhere very interesting.

The thickness of the snow on the top of this ranger's hut is an accurate representation of how much snow Tahoe has had this season

Our parking spot in the snow

Time to hit the road.  After some initial confusion about which way we were going around Lake Tahoe, I persuaded Simon to head south around the bottom edge of the lake, even though we had many miles to cover today.  The views were worth it:

South Lake Tahoe

Having stopped for a quick lunch, we reached Interstate 80 and really got some miles under our tyres.  The scenery drastically changed back to a more arid, mountainous climate as we got further back into Nevada.

New Frontier RV Park

Even with our extra mileage around the Lake we made good time and reached New Frontier RV park in Winnemucca before 6pm.  There have been warnings about possible storms this weekend and the clouds started to descend towards us in the valley.  Despite being parked next to a very alluring roadhouse, we must try and save some cash for the next few weeks.  So, the rain arriving gives us a good excuse to get cosy in the RV AND I need to pay some attention to this blog as I have fallen a couple of weeks further behind through being distracted (in a good way) for the last couple of weeks.

Sunset at New Frontier RV Park

Although we had planned to travel further on Sunday, the lure of a cheap campsite along with reasonable, new laundry facilities and the chance to take it easy was too much!  I had even got up early and gone for some exercise before we were due to set off.  But instead, Simon had a day of not stepping foot off the RV and being in charge of dinner (shepherd’s pie), whilst I sorted the laundry, tried but failed to Facetime a couple of people and made some major progress with the blog.