Day 8 - California here we come!

Today was the first day of the second week of our travels. We are holding up amazingly well. The kids got along so great all day today. They were creating Doodle Dudes, made up little characters that they would draw and assign types and names to. Whatever works! After grabbing a few groceries from last nights base, Elko, Nevada (isn't that always on episodes of Cops? - that's what Millman told me) we head toward California. In Nevada we checked out a couple of 'roadside attractions.' The first in Imlay, NV was a house and sculpture area called Thunder Mountain, created by a man of Native American Indian descent. He built is all as a monument to the Indian peoples. It was all built from junk he collected in the desert, stuff the white man threw away. This was meant to be in contrast to how the Indians always used every bit of of everything they took from the earth. I'll include some pics. Moving on we stopped in Lovelock, NV and has some lunch at the Cowpoke Cafe, a little restaurant/diner in the town. This was not a planned stop, just an impromptou discovery. It was pretty good and the kids were champion eaters, impressive since they were eating chocolate donuts and goldfish most of the way there! In Reno we took an exit downtown to check out an attraction we saw on roadsideamerica.com. It was an old VW beetle converted into a giant spider and put on top of a two story building downtown. I think the building used to be a car repair place. Not sure. Now it's a homeless shelter and sits next to the SPCA adoption center. Then we got outta Reno. The landscape instantly changed from brown mountains to green mountains when we hit the California border. We stopped in Truckee to visit the new Fifty Fifty Brewpub and restaurant. The brewmaster there is a man that I met several years ago from the Babblebelt. For a number of years he was the brewmaster at Flossmoor Station where he nabbed a few GABF medals. The beers at 50/50 were excellent and included one of the best tasting Belgian Tripels I've ever had. If you're in the area. . . While in Reno I got online and reserved us a room in Fairfield, CA, only 30 or 40 miles out of San Francisco, tomorrows destination. It is also home to the Jelly Belly jellybean company and I think we may take in the free 40 minute tour tomorrow.