Reno, Vegas’s Poor Relation
What spurred this road trip? As I plan for my camper life, I’m on the fence about do I go all in and be a full-timer or, do I have a home base somewhere and travel part-time. As this decision is in front of me, I know I won’t be able to stay in my current place in Berkeley, and have been pondering my next move.
Trevor Bexon - Reno, Nevada
There are three states that make it easier for full-timers to get a “domicile”, you know for all those government requirements like auto registration, license address, and tax filings to just name a few. One of the prime benefits of each of the three states is that they don’t have a state income tax; the states are Florida, Texas, and South Dakota. And this brings me to this trip to Reno, Nevada also doesn’t have a state income tax.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 12 years and last year was my first trip to Tahoe. It was during fire season and the smoke haze made it difficult to get outside; we did when the air cleared a little.
Growing up in New Hampshire I was used to mountains and when I went to Tahoe, I realized how much I missed seeing them. So this trip was planned to see if I would like living in Reno and needed to happen now so I could miss the snow; luckily there was some to make it feel like home.
Now I am not giving Reno credit by calling it Vegas’s poor relation. I was there from Monday - Thursday, and off-season. It looked like it got ravaged during the pandemic and as I saw some of the shops within the casinos open Thursday - Sunday, so it felt deserted the days I was there. I have been to Vegas 4 times and that was the vision I had in my head.
Reno
Reno is located around 22 miles north of Lake Tahoe on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains and is known as “The Biggest Little City in the World”. It is known for tourism revolving around its casinos; like Vegas’s cousin. It got its name from a civil war union Major General Jesse L. Reno who was killed in action. — Wikipedia
It’s beautifully located as you can see in the photo above. I lucked out, the days were in the middle 30s and completely sunny.
When I arrived Monday afternoon I decided to go out to find something to eat and to discover the famous arch. I was struck by how desolate the “strip” was. Places were boarded up and it took me a while to find a lunch spot.
With some of my photos, I applied filters to attempt to make them look older and more retro-looking to align with the vision I had in my head of Reno. Anyway, I found lunch and walked around, then headed back to the hotel to rest thinking the night would bring entertainment; I also wanted to plan the next day’s activities.
I don’t gamble so my visits to Vegas are usually walking around the strip, watching people gamble and there are always people to chat with; oh, and have overly expensive, but good food. Reno didn’t afford that type of night entertainment. Again, it was early in the week and I did see things picked up on Wednesday night vs. Monday. I walked around the casino a bit, grabbed dinner, and went back to my room; I’m not a planner and I knew I better figure out what I wanted to do the rest of my stay. I’d spend one-day seeing sights and one day looking at apartments, or at least drive by apartment complexes to see what they were like.
I stayed at Circus Circus and it was also connected to the Eldorado and Caesar’s hotels. These three are on what I presume is the strip, there are others located throughout downtown Reno.
Taken at dusk out the room window.
When I booked the hotel at Circus Circus I was a bit leary. In Vegas, it’s not the better hotel to stay at, but hey, it was $59 per night, and didn’t want this trip to cost a fortune.
It surely was dated and faded paint and carpets didn’t add to its glamor, but will say I was happy with the room. When I checked in they gave me a choice between the 6 or 18 floors, so I chose the room with a view, and it was a lovely view.
The room was large and clean. The bed was comfortable and I woke up each morning with a lovely view to get my day going. Overall the hotel was clean and so I really didn’t have complaints.
I got up Tuesday having decided to visit the Donner Memorial State Park, but first I would walk around the “strip”, take some pictures, grab a coffee, and head over the to park. The pictures below are from my walk. The sunlight was perfect and it allowed me to see a different face of the strip. What surprised me and I may have mentioned this already, how desolate it seemed. There were workers for sure, but clearly, this is not a “downtown” where people are bustling to their jobs.
I should have taken more time photographing the strip, but as I walked around it did seem sad. I do think the pandemic forced a lot of businesses to close, but there seems to be some activity happening again. They are converting an old casino into apartments, so maybe that will bring much-needed revitalization to that area. Again, it was a Tuesday during the off-season so I am sure this is much busier during the summer.
As I approached the Thunderbird Motel, I thought it had to have a story. It clearly was closed. It looked like it was part of the past of Reno’s heydays. The cafe looked cute and I pictured people driving to Reno in their 1950s cars and coming to stay here to spend the weekend gambling. Motels were popular. I remember staying at them as a kid when my family vacationed; they definitely are part of our Americana.
I’ve tried to find history on this motel but didn’t come up with anything. It’s obviously closed, not sure when, but I can still find it on Google as a viable place to stay, but nope closed as you can see. There still is a Yelp page and found reviews recently as 2019 so I suspect COVID shut her doors. Anyway, it was fun to investigate. Did come across another Thunderbird Motel, but in Elko, NV.
Having secured my coffee at a newly renovated Starbucks, I got in my truck and headed to Donner Park.
Donner Memorial National Park
For those who don’t know the Donner Party was a group of pioneers who migrated to California from the midwest in 1846. Like so many others at the time, this party just had some pretty bad luck. Wagon trains were made up of lots of individual families who were all looking to go west for a better life, or maybe strike some gold, either way, it was safer to travel in large groups. This particular wagon train started out with 500 wagons.
Typically families would form into smaller groups as a way to manage the travel within the larger train. They would name a leader and that leader’s last name would become known as their “party’s name”. New leaders could be assigned along the journey.
The Donners were from Springfield, IL, and departed from Independence, Missouri along the Oregon Trail in 1846. The travel west usually took around 6 months. The Donners were named leaders of their party later in the journey and were made up of 87 members. Each party could determine when and how long to stop, thus leading to a very strung-out wagon train.
Throughout the journey, the Donner party made some poor choices, the worst was to take advice from a guy named Landford Hastings who promised a much shorter route than the one all others had taken before. Instead of following the Oregon trail and then cutting south on the California Trail, they would fork off at Ft. Bridger in Wyoming which would take them through the Great Salt Lake desert; this was supposed to save them around 300 miles. The big problem with Landford’s route, it was never actually traveled. The Donner party was desperate to get to CA before winter they took the bait.
By Kmusser - Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, Trails data from the NPS [1], all other features from the National Atlas., CC BY-SA 3.0,
At the end of the California Trail is Sutter’s Fort, which is nowadays Sacramento.
The decision to take this trail would prove to be the death of them. It took them a month longer than expected and along the way, they lost a lot of their cattle and possessions going through the desert. When they finally hooked back up with the California Trail they were way behind the rest of the wagon train. Of course, they still thought they had time to get through the Sierra Mountains before winter hit; snows typically would come in the middle of November. When they got closer to the mountains, they discovered the lush area around the Truckee river currently Reno, and before they started their climb over the mountains they took another few days to rest.
At this point, they were on the California trail, which was well-traveled, but it was a perfect storm of events. The snow came early that year, which covered the trail, and the party got stranded near Truckee Lake, now called Donner Lake. The families that were stranded were the Breens, Graves, Reeds, Murphys, and Donners. Over the next months, there would be several attempts to make it over the pass, but the 22’ snow kept most of them where they made shelter.
By the spring, only 48 survived by eating the dead members of their parties and the story of cannibalism is what made them famous. I’m definitely glossing over a lot of their story, if you’re interested you can find more information on Wikipedia.
What made traveling through the Sierras difficult were its 500 distinct peaks some over 12,000’ high and the proximity to the Pacific Ocean caused it to have more snow than any other mountain range in North America.
I learned about the Donner party in history class; not sure they teach it to kids today. Last year during my trip to Tahoe, I came upon the Donner Lake scenic pullover to view the lake. The story came flooding back and so I downloaded the book to read while on the trip and when I got home I found videos to watch about their story, sadly not many good movies…hey Netflix!.
If you look down this photo towards the bottom of the lake is where some of the families were camped. They weren’t all together at this point due to the amount of snow on the ground. The Donner family was actually a few miles away from the main families.
This trip brought snow-capped mountains, quite frankly it was beautiful. I haven’t seen snow in years and was glad there were some and luckily for me, it wasn’t 22’ of it. But looking down at the lake from this view, seeing all the mountains peaks around, you can imagine what it must have been like for the Donner Party looking up to see how much more they had to go, but stranded by already many feet of snow that forced them to stop going forward.
Standing there you can’t help but take a lot of pictures of the same view and some of the surrounding peaks. I almost didn’t want to leave, but hey I had the rest of my trip to enjoy. This pullover is on the way toward Tahoe. Sadly there aren’t many pullover spots because it’s hard not to get caught up in the scenery vs driving. I can see why having a self-driving truck could make sense.
photo from Wikipedia. Taken by the US Geological Survey Agency, 1870
This is what the High Pass, now named Donner Pass looked like back in 1870 at 7,088 feet through the mountains. This would have been the highest point they would have needed to go through before they started their descent down the other side of the Sierras, but they were stuck at @1,000 feet below near Truckee lake, now Donner Lake.
The Donner Memorial State Park was established in 1928 as a memorial to the members of the Donner party that perished. It’s roughly 3,293 acres. Has 2.5 miles of hiking trails. 3 miles of lake frontage and campgrounds. It was a quiet day when I arrived. The sun was shining and the temperature hovered around 40°s. There was snow on the ground so this made the experience more poignant, ok not 22’ of it, but enough to make the experience more real.
I have to say, it does bring it home when you see this monument and the mountain range in the background. The stone part of the monument is how deep the snow was 22 feet deep.
The plaque above was on the backside of the monument and it reads:
NEAR THIS SPOT STOOD THE BREEN CABIN OF THE PARTY OF EMIGRANTS WHO STARTED FOR CALIFORNIA FROM SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, IN APRIL 1846, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CAPTAIN GEORGE DONNER. DELAYS OCCURRED AND WHEN THE PARTY REACHED THIS LOCALITY, ON OCTOBER 29, THE TRUCKEE PASS EMIGRANT ROAD WAS CONCEALED BY SNOW. THE HEIGHT OF THE SHAFT OF THE MONUMENT INDICATES THE DEPTH OF THE SNOW, WHICH WAS TWENTY-TWO FEET. AFTER FUTILE EFFORTS TO CROSS THE SUMMIT THE PARTY WAS COMPELLED TO ENCAMP FOR THE WINTER. THE GRAVES CABIN WAS SITUATED ABOUT THREE-QUARTERS OF A MILE TO THE EASTWARD, THE MURPHY CABIN ABOUT TWO HUNDRED YARDS SOUTHWEST OF THE MONUMENT, AND THE DONNER TENTS WERE AT THE HEAD OF ALDER CREEK. NINETY PEOPLE WERE IN THE PARTY AND FORTY-TWO PERISHED, MOST OF THEM FROM STARVATION AND EXPOSURE.
This plaque was not too far from the bridge above and was the site of the Murphy cabin and made up part of the fireplace.
There is a really nice visitors center; yea for bathrooms. It has a nice exhibit on the Donner Party, but also on the region over the years. There is also a 20-minute video on the Donner Party.
I wanted to see what the view was from the lake looking up at the peaks so I venture towards the lake. It’s really not a long hike, and enough people have gone before me to make following the path easy since there was snow on the ground. Once I saw the lake, I ventured off the path and followed the shore, the water was noticeably low; California draughts.
The sun started to go down, so it was time to head back. I jumped on the trail and headed back to my truck. This excursion was definitely worth it.
LAST BITS OF THE TRIP
I went back to the hotel, took a nap, and then planned what my next day would be. As I mentioned part of this trip was to see if I wanted to move to Reno. I looked at rental properties online to get a sense of rents. So now I had to take my tourist hat off and put on my “I’m going to live here hat”. That night I ventured into the other connected hotels and found much better food, always having to remind myself “be curious”.
On Wednesday, I got started later than I wanted. I drove around doing some drive-bys, nothing really appealed to me, but there was one place I really wanted to see and it was close to downtown Reno. The Retreat. Completely new development with spectacular views. It had all the amenities, a gym, co-work space, pool, hot tub, and barbecue. There are 1-2 bedroom apartments and if you need something larger they have townhouses. It’s 4 miles from downtown Reno and nicely located.
On the drive back to the hotel I got excited. I could see myself living there, this wasn’t so scary I could do this. I’ve moved so many times in my life, Colorado, Boston, Chicago, California, and what’s one more?
I went out that night. Had a great dinner and called it a night.
I left Reno around 9 am on Thursday for the 3-hour drive home. Once I crossed over the Donner Pass, there was one more scenic pullover, I stopped at to get one more look at the snow-capped mountains.
Overall this trip was successful. Reno is worth the venture even if you don’t gamble, there is so much more to do. Lots of hiking trails and Tahoe to explore. If you are a skier, then Tahoe is a destination, when there is more snow of course.
It was quiet this time of year for sure, but summer will be crowded with tourists. I think it is definitely a different experience in the winter vs. summer, choose your season but be careful, in the winter like the Donner Party experienced, it can snow a lot.