Note: This post is from September 5, 2008.

Throughout this trip Christine and I have had a running joke. Every time we come up to a highway entrance and we see the signs telling which ramp to take for which direction, we ask each other, "Hmm, should we go east or west?" The answer, of course, has always been west. I know it's not the world's best joke, but after 10 or 12 repetitions it gets funnier. Trust me. This morning, as we were leaving Wendover and heading back onto Rt 80, we were both a little tired, so we didn't make the joke. We should have.

I won't say which of us was driving, but we ended up getting on the highway in the wrong direction. No big deal, right? We'll just get off at the next exit and turn around. Unfortunately, in the middle of the Utah desert, the next exit is in 32 miles.

On the plus side, we got another couple looks at the scenery in that part of the world, this time in daylight. Miles and miles of white salt-covered sand, interspersed with shrubby growth and a few heavily-irrigated farms. Very exciting.

Anyway, an hour into our day, we passed by Wendover, on the Nevada border. We didn't stop, but I hear there are a couple casinos in the Nevada side (technically West Wendover), but nothing too special.

From there we continued on Rt 80 across Nevada. This was now the Nevada desert. It is contiguous with the Utah desert, but the character changes a bit. More sandy than salty, without the red rock, and the drive is much flatter. Nevada still has a lot of mountainous peaks, but they are spread out enough that the road goes around them more than it goes over. The terrain is also less varied, though still interesting. It's not all sand dunes, like the typical "desert" image I would have expected. It's little scrubby tufts of tough desert grass, sometimes with bunches of little yellow flowers sticking out. Then a few rocky outcroppings, some more fields struggling mightily against nature with the help of irrigation, and even the occasional river.

Surprisingly, we were still pretty high, elevation-wise: around six to seven thousand feet. Denver's title of the Mile High City is seeming less and less impressive. I guess it makes sense that the middle part of a continent would be higher up than the coasts, but it still surprised me.

As we got closer to Reno and the California border, the elevation decreased and the vegetation became greener and more varied.

Reno is, in one sense, a mini-Vegas, that sense being that there is a strip of casinos. In other senses, it's very different. I spent a couple days in Las Vegas last year, and it was impressive with its absurdity and the scale of things. Reno doesn't have the ostentatious scale, but it also doesn't feel as isolating. The Vegas strip is a world unto itself, and the rest of the city may as well not exist. In Reno, it feels like you're in a city called Reno, that happens to have casinos, as opposed to being in a casino that happens to be in a place called Las Vegas.

Reno seems to be going through some hard times, though. A couple of the casinos were closed, and more than a few looked as if they could use a fresh coat of paint. We had a couple good hamburgers at a local microbrewery called Brew Brothers. Christine gambled a little. I went to bed early.

Tomorrow morning, we plan on seeing some hot air balloons that are in town for a festival. Then we're going to San Francisco!