Day 2

We were on the road, a bit later than planned — what the heck, we are on vacation. The trip was routine most of the day, however, we had an "It's a small world" moment. We had planned to drive to Winnemucca where we would have lunch and top off the motorhome fuel tank. After driving by the town of Lovelock, Kay and I talked about modifying our plans. We would pull into the rest area before getting to Winnemucca to have lunch, then we would just stop in Winnemucca to refuel and be on our way.

As I drove into the rest area at exit 158 — out in the middle of nowhere — I saw a motorhome that looked very much like that owned by friends of ours. I pointed the motorhome out to Kay and said that it looked like Don and Gaye's, but the towed vehicle wasn't the one that they pulled. As we stopped and were getting ready for lunch, I saw Don walking back to his motorhome. It was our friends, what a small world.

A familiar looking motorhome was in a rest area in the "middle of nowhere"

We met Gaye and Don in "the middle of nowhere"

Don and Gaye were heading back to their home in California. What are the odds of this kind of thing happening? We hadn't seen Don and Gaye for more than a year. It was fun to see them and visit for a little bit before we parted to go in opposite directions.

After lunch we headed east on I-80 which often will have the old US-40 highway running parallel to the freeway. As is common with the old pavement, there were weeds growing through cracks in the old roadway. On our first trip this way in 1968 we drove on a lot of the old US-40 while the I-80 Interstate was being built. It was interesting to see how the different states built the Interstate. But that's another story.

A piece of the old US-40 is running next to the freeway

There are a couple of tunnels along I-80 that we've driven through many times over the years. On this trip it would be the first time for us to go through the tunnels in our Monaco motorhome. As we approached the tunnel entrance, the curved walls seemed to reach out to our motorhome. The walls seemed uncomfortably close. It was probably just an optical illusion, however, with no traffic behind us I steered our larger RV to just cross over the center line a little. It made for a much more comfortable ride that way.

Ahead of us was a familiar dual-bore tunnel that we've driven through soon after it was finished years ago.This would be one set of two pairs of tunnels along this route. Before the tunnels were built we had to take a somewhat winding route through the mountains while following the path of a river. The tunnels reduce the distance traveled by several miles.

Tunnels ahead that reduce our travel distance

What do you know? There IS a light at the end of the tunnel

As we drove east, we were catching up with a weather front that was defined by the many rain cells we could see across the horizon ahead of us. Every once in a while a bolt of lightening would flash in one of the small rain squalls. We finally caught up with the dark clouds and they did their thing — rained on us for a few minutes at a time.

Scenery seen as we drive across Nevada

It was decided that we would call it a day at 6pm as we pulled into the Wendover KOA — number 2 on the map. I was pleased to find that among the offerings of the campground was a wi-fi hotspot at no extra charge.

We played tag with rain squalls most of the afternoon

[ SUMMARY ]

[ PREV ]

[ NEXT ]

[ RV FUN TRIPS ]