The Loneliest Road 09Jul17

We hit the road for NorCal and took a non-typical route which included extensive travel on the "Loneliest Road in America" through northern Nevada. It's US 50 and yeah... some of it was on fire. It's aptly named as we saw cars only every 30 min or so for many hours at a time. We rested for the night in Eureka, NV which was almost abandoned but for firefighters. Yet, we found a motel called Gold Country Inn that was OK and a restaurant called the Urban Cowboy where we drank the local IPA, Great Basin Icky. We made great time on this road but really needed to watch gas levels as there are 200 mile stretches without services... but cool dunes. Things changed as we got onto I80 near Reno and Californians began to consolidate toward coastal homes from mountain weekends and road trips themselves. We stopped for a growler pickup in Truckee though and tasted the Rockslide IPA and Landslide DIPA at Fifty Fifty Brewing. Finally in Berkeley we had a great meal with my cousins (Ken & Steph Pardee) and their families (Craig, Ruth, Gabi & JoJo). Today we hit the original Pete's Coffee (now remodeled) and walked Marin St hill to the top of Berkeley then dined at the famous Chez Panisse with Ken & JoJo - food and family here are spectacular.