Day 8: June 23, 2000
Drive home from Laramie River Ranch

Ranch staff at breakfast

Most of the other guests had taken off early, so we were the only ones there for breakfast along with Vicki & Penny. Again we chatted with Bill over breakfast, and after writing something in the guest book, we said our goodbyes to Bill, Krista, Vicki, Penny, Jeff and the crew who were around. I took a quick picture of some of the staff as they were eating breakfast, I'm sure relieved that they'd survived the week, and gearing up for the next batch of guests. It was such a wonderful week, it was hard to leave.

The drive home was fairly straightforward. We listened to the end of Harry Potter on the way out, once again really enjoying it. We were sad when it was over. After that, Walendo took a long nap while I drove through Wyoming. We stopped just before Salt Lake for gas and then once again wound up taking an indirect route through Salt Lake City because of the construction. It's odd that you can't just stay on 80, but I guessed that they're doing a bunch of construction to prepare for hosting the Olympics. As we were driving, we started listening to the tapes of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Both of us had trouble getting into it. In contast with Harry Potter, the language seemed awfully flowery and wordy -- it seemed to take a lot of words for anything to happen. I'm not sure what it says when Dickens seems flowery and wordy compared with Harry Potter, but so be it. We listened on and off throughout the day, only able to listen in small doses. We stopped in Wendover again quickly, and Walendo picked up some "moon pies," chocolate marshmallow gloppy things, 3 for $1 at the gas station. He also picked up one of those circulars with discounts on hotels, which came in handy later. On we went, picking up an hour when we crossed into Nevada, arriving at Winnemucca at about 7pm where we stopped for dinner at Jerry's diner. (That was surprisingly good, friendly & fast service, and we both liked our food. Much better than our consistently bad experiences at Lyon's.) We considered staying in Winnemucca for the night, but it was still light and neither of us was that tired so we kept going.

We finally stopped in Reno at about 10pm. Walendo said he might want to just keep going till we got home but I was too tired. Meantime, he was driving at night with his blurry eyesight, seeing haloes around all the lights, so it didn't seem like the smartest thing to do. We went to a Travelodge listed in the discount booklet and got a room for $29.11 (including tax), the cheapest we've ever stayed in. Not the nicest room we've ever stayed in, but for the price, it was fine.

The next morning we got up early and we were on the road by 7:52am, to be exact. We took Route 80 to 680 into the Bay Area, which I hadn't done before. We encountered two accidents, but neither had a long backup, which was good. We tried to find the exit with the place that had the delicious oranges from the drive out but they didn't have the signs up or we missed them because we never found it, sadly enough. It took us only about 4 hours to get home, all the way from Reno, which was surprising. It was about about noon when we got in. We decided to stop at Costco on the way, since we needed toilet paper. Somehow we ended up spending $275, but we got some good stuff -- including many pairs of $14 sneakers. It was amusing that we loaded up on all that stuff and didn't even need to think about whether we'd have room to put it in the car, despite hauling all our gear from the trip. That Expedition comes in mighty handy. Finally, we arrived home. Of course Walendo immediately went to the computers, and I unpacked, did laundry, and handled finances. In the evening, we went down to Russ & Judy's to pick up Libby, who seemed happy to see us, although not as ecstatic as usual. It seemed like she had a good time with Knuffi and those guys. We brought Thai food and we sat around boring Russ & Judy with dude ranch stories. They said they might be interested in going next year with us, so maybe we could get a group together. That'd be really nice. Finally we drove home with Libby, and with her back in the house with us, we were truly back home.

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