Reno, NV Part 1

September 26-October 5

Reno, NV

Matt attended a national TWS (The Wildlife Society) conference in Reno, NV for a week at the end of September, and the kids and I got to go along. We pulled the kids out of school for a week and didn't feel a single bit bad about it. :) Matt could only drive 10 hours in one day so we broke up the drive into a few days on both sides of the trip. It made for a more relaxing pace, that's for sure! On Thursday 9/26, we drove to Grand Junction, CO and stayed there for the night. It's just under 1000 miles (994) from Canon City to Reno, just about the same distance from Canon to Fergus. The next day, we saw some beautiful fall colors in Utah and got into Reno after dark. It was an easy drive. We stayed at a Residence Inn about a mile from the Reno Convention Center. Matt ended up walking back and forth quite a bit, mostly by choice. He usually jumps at the opportunity to stretch his legs after sitting so much! The kids and I took a relaxed approach to the week; we explored Reno but we also spread our wings a bit and used Reno as a jumping point to check out other areas. 

Matt took a class on Saturday so he was up and out of the hotel for most of the day right away. The kids and I swam in the hotel pool, explored a hiking trail, found a playground, and made a grocery store run for the week. Our hotel had a little kitchenette so our plan was to eat in as much as possible. The Residence Inn also had nightly socials four of the nights we stayed there, and the socials consisted of pretty decent meals. One night was brats and soft pretzels, one night was mac and cheese and bbq chicken sliders, along with soup and salad bar every night. The breakfast was amazing, too, so between the morning and evening meals, we really didn't need to make much for food! 

One thing that I was really excited to do was to take the kids to San Francisco. It was only another five hours from Reno, so we packed a little overnight back and headed west for two days. That will be a separate post! We also spent a whole day at Lake Tahoe; we drove around nearly the whole thing and stopped along the way. We had never seen Lake Tahoe before! We got to enjoy city life for a week; Reno is 250,000 people so there were plenty of shops and restaurants, none of which we really went to. I do remember a Dutch Bros coffee run and a stop at the Scheels store to ride the Ferris wheel! That was pretty fun! We swam every day and the kids managed to do their make-up work from school while we were gone, too. We had a great week!