COLORADO TRIP - 2001

8/19/01 (Sunday) - Saratoga, CA to Sand Mountain, NV

Today we left home at 6 am for our trip to Colorado.  Traffic was very light getting out of the bay area so driving was easy.  Just set the speed control to 55 mph and off we went.

Past Sacramento, approaching Auburn, CA we saw and smelled a lot of smoke.  There were still active forest fires around Weimar, CA, about 20 miles east of Auburn.  There was a lot of smoke in the air and we even saw some trees still burning.  There were many fire trucks in the area.

Later on, near the Emigrant Gap, we saw where there had been a major fire just a few days earlier.  We could see where it had jumped the road.  In fact, I-80 was closed one day last week during the peak of the fire activity.

Anyway, we passed on, through Truckee, CA and Reno, NV and on to Fallon, NV., where, upon arriving at about 12:30 pm, we gassed up (315 miles from home, $1.459/gal).  We went on another 25 miles to the Sand Mountain Recreation area where we planned to camp over night. This BLM (Bureau of Land Management) area offered free camping.  There is a giant sand dune there.

 
Here we are entering the Sand Mountain Recreation Area

The large sand mountain is just ahead. People camp there and like to take their ATVs and dune buggies on the big sand dune.

First thing Steve managed to do was to get the truck and trailer stuck in the sand.  After some effort, and calling 5 different tow services, we managed to get unstuck.  I actually had to drive back to Fallon to get a tow truck. I was able to unhitch the truck and move it out. Reconnecting it to the trailer was a bit of a challenge though.

Since it was rather stressful and exhausting activity I neglected to take and photos of the actual event. Yoshiko was too busy chiding me to think to take any either. Hence, no photos of being stuck or extracted.

Since I had to let most of the air out of the truck tires to get out we stayed there over night while I tried to refill all the tires.  I managed to get all tires back up to 35 psi before the air compressor gave out.  So each tire was 10 psi low, but good enough for us to drive out the next day.

Here we are set up for a night's stay at Sand Mountain

You can see the little air compressor near the back tire.
My rocking chair is placed in the shade of the trailer.

Well, we were both tired and hot after all that (we were in the desert after all) that we just had a simple dinner. Yoshiko had tofu with fixings and Steve had a small frozen pizza.  We also drank a lot of liquids (nonalchoholic) since we were a bit dehydrated after all the work under the sun.

Went to bed early and had a good night's sleep.