From Pacifica, CA to Reno, NV: Saturday, May 15th

We couldn’t get it together enough to leave early today, too much of a late night the night before and not too long of a journey ahead made us a little more relaxed, and it was a good feeling! Dave had located a Camping World a couple of hours away, about midway on the trip, to look at a little ‘O’ gas grill. We use our grill a LOT and the one we brought with us had served us well for the last few years but was definitely showing signs of wear and tear, as we use it for half of our meals, a functioning version was much needed. Success! We are now the owners (well, Dave really, we don’t touch it!) of a cute little orange grill with its own drip tray, no more scrubbing the table of grease after it’s housed the old grill.

We came into Reno via Donner Pass – such an incredible story of survival there, one that we chose not to share with the kids at this point but I know Jake would be so interested. You’ll have to google it, not for the faint of heart.

We pulled into another car park style campground in the grounds of the Grand Sierra Resort. This used to be a KOA campground many years ago and the map still showed a playground which apparently was taken down about 5 years ago, evidently a new map is needed! We did a very quick set-up, rushed everyone through the shower – thankfully the bathrooms were clean, close to us, had plenty of hot water and great water pressure – ahhhh!

Danielle had called on the way over to let us know they’d booked a table for dinner. Dave has extended family in Reno, so we were very excited to see them again. Betsy, Danielle’s Mum, is Marie’s daughter. Marie was Dave’s Nana’s niece, his Mum’s cousin. When his Nana was young, in about 1910, her parents and siblings emigrated to the USA but she was too weak to travel, so had to stay behind with other family. The intention was that she would join them when she was better, however World War 1 began in 1914 and lasted until 1918, by which point, she was almost an adult and had a well-established life in England. She saw her siblings a few times during her lifetime and Anne, Dave’s Mum, was wonderful about keeping in touch too, so we are trying to be as diligent and not lose the ties to the ‘American family’.

We had a wonderful meal at a Mexican restaurant nearby, you would never have guessed that our kids had never even heard of, let alone met, Danielle and Pete’s kids – they all got along brilliantly. Brett and Hunter are 8 year old twins and Ashlynn is almost 5. Roberta, Marie’s other daughter, was also there, visiting from Sacramento. They are all so sweet, kind, generous, we felt so blessed. At the end of the evening (smart people that they are, they had reserved a table in its own room so the kids could play around after dinner without disturbing anyone), ours were begging to have their new found cousins over to play!