Nevada

Greg is starting that Job in Minden, NV next month at GE Energy. This being the case we needed to find a place to move into in July. We've been looking into places on the internet, but it's hard to want to pick a place without seeing it in person so we hopped in the car and drove out to Minden to do some house hunting.

It was a looooonnnnnggggg drive.  We drove the whole 10 hour trip on Thursday. We stopped, of course, several times and traded off driving.  We got to see some cool scenery  like several different mountain ranges, the Salt Lake and the salt flats. (I'd never seen the salt flats since I'd never driven out that far west before, they were kind of neat) We were tired when we arrived and checked into a Best Western. Luckily they had a room available. We didn't call ahead and reserve one because we didn't think it would be a problem. Turned out it was graduation weekend at the local High school so the hotels were busy.

Friday was our busy day. First things first we headed to the real estate management company's office that we found on the Internet. They gave us some keys to some of the available properties so we could check them out.  We went all over Minden to 6 different rental properties: a few duplexes, a townhouse and a couple of houses.  We found a duplex we liked so we went back to the office and told them we were interested in it They called the owner and said it was good.  They took it off their list of properties and told us to come back with a cashier's check or money order for our security deposit. We headed out to the bank, then to lunch (which was had at a nice little restaurant across from the park in downtown mindon), then back to the duplex to take pictures and  drop of the money order with the property manager.  After that we headed to the GE building.  We met Greg's Hiring Manager and some of the people he will be working with. His hiring manager gave us a little tour of the building. 

We accomplished all of this by about 4 pm so we had some time to have a little fun in the evening so we decided to drive around Lake Tahoe. We put on our swimsuits just in case we decided to splash around the water. The scenery was very beautiful or as Greg  kept saying, "Spectacular".  We found a nice little beach area and walk in the water a little bit but didn't splash around too much. The water was cold.

Our next stop on the trip around the lake, we found a nice forest area with some good hiking trails. We started to take a little hike, but it got cut short when  one of  the rangers approached us and told us to be careful because she spotted a bear and her cub near the trail. We decided to head back to the car. The car was parked by the biggest tree I have even seen. It's no Redwood, but it was a pine tree estimated to be 400 years old.

The next stop was Emerald bay. It was a beautiful portion of  the lake. It contained a little island that had a stone structure that almost looked like a little castle.

After that we didn't make anymore stops around the lake. We just drove around the lake over the winding mountain roads and made our way to Carson City for dinner. Then we headed back to the hotel. Saturday we had no plans to travel the whole ten hours back. We decided we would head to Elko, NV and stay the night at Greg's Aunt Lynette's. That way we only had about half the trip. This left us with some extra time for some fun so we stopped in Virginia City on the way. Virginia City was an Old western mining town. Most of the buildings are the original buildings in the city. Most of them have been turned into shops and casinos. The catholic church is the oldest catholic church in Nevada and had a little museum in the basement that we walked through. We had fun in town. We walked up and down the streets looking at the buildings, walking through the shops and of course taking pictures. We took a narrated trolley tour through the town that showed us the old trains and mines and the graveyard. It told the history of the town. Now we know the places we need to see when we go back again sometime. Because it was the weekend, the people that work in town were dressed in traditional old western clothing, even the sheriff and a random miner with a donkey. It was a lot of fun. We even got an old west photo done at one of the gift shops. We probably headed out of Minden too late that morning and stayed in Virigina City a little too long. We didn't make it to Aunt Lynettes house until after 8. She was happy to have us there. She had dinner ready for us and made us a nice breakfast the next morning. It was nice visiting with her and her family. We left Lynette's house around noon today (Sunday) and finished the rest of the trip back to Provo. Now we are home and are tired. It sure was a busy little "vacation." We had a lot of fun and are very, very glad that we found a place to move into. Unfortunatly, we are sad to have to wait until next month to move in.