UNR Orientation

On Sunday Faith and I drove up to Reno so that she could attend orientation on Monday. Everyone warned us about the long drive of nothingness. Maybe it was that our expectations were so low or maybe it's that we really enjoy the lesser known parts of Nevada, but we thought the drive was delightful. We tried listening to a book on CD for a few short chapters, but decided that we wanted to enjoy each others' company more than a book.

 On the drive northward we noticed:
 -  Big buildings in Amargosa Valley that we had never noticed before. There is more there to see than the Area 51 Alien Center.
 - We stopped to have lunch in Beatty at the Subway/gas station/nut and candy factory where we bought the best ever mesquite BBQ jerky.
 - Goldfield was a fun surprise! It was a very small, but quite intriguing old mining town. We promised to stop there on our way home.
 - Tonopah had the famous Clown Motel and there was a very big tower outside of Tonopah near a rest stop that I had to find out about as well.
 - Hawthorne had big military things. I also had to research this.
 - Walker Lake was just outside Hawthorne. I didn't realize how much water there is in Northern Nevada!
 - Yerington has a Hangar Cafe at the airport that we thought would be fun to try out on the way home.

When we got to Reno we checked in at our "authentic" hotel experience. We decided on The Victorian Inn in Sparks because we thought it would be memorable. It was. It was old and had a turret that made it look Victorian.




The rooms were just fine, but we knew we wouldn't be hanging out at our hotel on this visit anyway. There was almost a full gallon of milk in the fridge that we decided not to try :)

We had dinner at Olive Garden because Faith loves pasta and so she did their buy a pasta meal and take a pasta meal home deal so she got pasta for breakfast too. It was fun to be the one to take her to The Olive Garden for the first time. After dinner we walked around the Sparks Marina where we saw more owners of wolf appearing dogs than we have ever seen in one place before. (UNR's mascot is the Wolf Pack.)

Faith refused to call the utinsel a fork. It was obviously a trike.

On Monday morning Faith ate her pasta for breakfast and we headed to campus. It was only 10 minutes away from our hotel. We saw Argenta Hall on the way in which had an explosion recently that they were obviously repairing. I dropped Faith off at the Joe Crowley student union building and went to explore campus on my own. My first stop was the library, a huge and newish looking building that houses the Center for Basque studies on the third floor, but it wasn't open yet, so I kept walking.

I found myself in an education building and wandered around their children's education library looking at books and supplies. I found these rules for teachers from 1886 that were really charming and alarming all at the same time. A married female teacher would have been scandalous at the time!

I had to take a picture of the Reynolds School of Journalism as that is Faith's major. It turns out that she didn't get to talk to her academic adviser because they weren't there that day as "no journalism majors were [supposed to be] at orientation that day." Instead, she talked to people from the math lab who encouraged her to apply to be a tutor this fall, met an academic adviser (for undeclared majors) named Grace who commiserated about their names and virtue jokes, and made friends with a cute guy who had red curly hair because she thought I would approve of that. Which I did.

I explored the fine arts building, found the pond and explored Reno. Faith and I had lunch with Sean (red curly hair boy) and his parents who live in China and teach school at international schools. That was fascinating. They have lived in Guam, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China. When I asked Sean how many languages he speaks, he replied, "My Chinese is pretty good."

 I also had the opportunity to explore the Center for Basque studies where I heard Basque being spoken among professors and I also heard beautiful perfect Spanish from Northern Spain being spoken. I read about the Laxalts who are prominent Basques in Northern Nevada. Faith told me later that she was told that there is Basque folk dancing on campus at times. I told her that she MUST participate!

In the afternoon I drove to Squaw Valley, but didn't take pictures. It was spectacularly beautiful and the radio nearly promised that I would see bears crossing the road, which I was very much hoping to see but didn't, but my main focus was on finding a bathroom. I needed a potty break desperately!

When orientation was over Faith lamented that they hadn't given any time to explore campus, but we were both pretty tuckered, so we grabbed dinner at Sonic and ate it at the Sparks Marina where we walked again too (and saw more wolf-dogs.)

This time we got closer to the water where we saw pretty little yellow breasted birds that thought we should be feeding them. Faith took pictures of the birds and I took pictures of Faith.

Tuesday morning we got up and headed out of town to go home via the same way we came so we could stop at all the fun things.

Our first stop was Pyramid Lake. Faith helped me live a dream and allowed us to take a 40 minute detour to see Pyramid Lake. It was lovely even though the pyramid that is its namesake is quite small from far away. We didn't have time to find out how to get closer. An adventure for another day.

We also saw some amazing spiders on this sign who were getting big and fat off of all the wonderful bugs at the lake.

Sadly we weren't hungry in Yerington and the Hangar Cafe didn't look open anyway. We stopped instead to top off the fuel and get a Diet Dr. Pepper for me.

I found out that the reason that Hawthorne has so much Army stuff is because it is the biggest Army depot for ammunition storage in the country. There are bunkers that surround the town and signs in town about what is prohibited when transporting explosives.

We stopped barely in time for me to avoid wetting myself just outside Tonopah at the Millers Rest stop where we had seen the huge tower. The tower it turns out is part of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. In the tower is molten salt that is heated by the solar panels and turned into steam to generate energy. Unfortunately, both times we passed, there was a cloud cover over the solar panels.

We had to stop at the creepiest place on earth, The Clown Hotel, which appeared to be undergoing renovations. Maybe one day we will be brave enough to stay there. It is pretty much the half-way mark between Reno and Las Vegas.

40 minutes away from Tonopah is Goldfield where we stopped to wander through a second hand/novelty/candy store/museum and admire the crazy bedazzled cars. The Goldfield Hotel is now empty (as is most of the town) but reportedly haunted, but quite beautiful as buildings go. If you're interested in owning a castle in Goldfield, that's also available!
 https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1-Bonnie-Clair-Rd-Goldfield-NV-89013/2087461107_zpid/

Before long we were back to our people in Henderson, but these hard-to-get-to spots in Nevada are so intriguing to me! I would drive that again just for fun. And with Faith going to school in Reno, I'll probably get the opportunity!