It's been a long time since we went on a trip. After Pranav's birth it has become even more difficult for all of us to go together as our car can take only 5 people. So finally we rented a van and headed to Reno on Friday (Dec 4). Initially we planned to go on Dec 2 for our marriage anniversary but that did not work out. We started around 11AM on Friday and reached Reno around 4PM. We stayed at Grand Sierra Resort. We took a bus late in the evening and went to the downtown. There was not much crowd and the street was almost empty. Even though we have been to Reno a few times, we never roamed on the street in the evening with all the lights on. Some of the casinos were closed (recession effect).
The next day we went to Tahoe. We had lunch at Baja Fresh near Heavenly and after lunch planned to go to Heavenly on the Gondola. But it was very cold and windy, we could not even walk a few feet. So we came back, had coffee and headed back to Reno. On the way we stopped at a few places and took pictures of the grand vistas. I really like the open place between South Lake Tahoe and Carson City. Here is one of the panorama shots.
Once we reached hotel, we went to the funquest and Nikila played a lot of games there.
The next morning we started out journey back to San Jose. As soon as we entered I-80, there was a sign that said the road is closed at Truckee due to an accident. We thought it would reopen in an hour or so. But we were wrong. By the time we reached Truckee the traffic was so backed up and we were stranded on the road for almost 3 hours. Snow storm soon started dumping lots of snow and we were so scared and there are not chains. Finally we decided to halt in Truckee in the first hotel we get accommodation. By that time there was already lots of snow and some how we managed to get into this hotel (Truckee hotel). It was snowing a lot the whole night. The next morning, when we went to pick up our car from the parking lot, it was almost buried in the snow. There were some people to plough the car and it took him almost 2 hours to plough all the snow. Finally we got chains and started our journey back. There was snow almost till the outskirts of Sacramento. The last experience was some thing that we haven't seen. It was very unsettled and confusing the previous night. Finally we made home safely.
Nikila and Pranav did not create any problem at all. I thought with such big traffic and snow issue, the kids are not going to take it well. But they were very happy and almost slept through out the journey.
