Reno, Tahoe, San Francisco and the Amtrak

 We'd been planning to visit Adam's brother and wife all summer. Scott and Christie live in Reno and we figured why not, plus we wanted to check out Lake Tahoe and a quick trip to San Francisco wouldn't be all that bad either. Of course I expected we'd make a road trip out of it so you can only imagine my surprise when I got a text from Adam the day before we left that said: We're taking the train to Reno I just bought our tickets. Awesome, I thought, I'll be riding in some box car with transients and hippies. Who rides Amtrak anyway..? But after doing a bit of research I became really excited, observation cars, cushy lounge chairs, a restaurant on board. We were in for a luxurious ride across the desert.

Our train left Salt Lake at 11:30pm on Thursday and arrived in Reno at 8:30am Friday. We slept all night and woke up in a new place ready to take on adventure.

 

When we got to Reno we threw on our swimsuits and loaded up the car and drove into the mountains to Lake Tahoe. 

 The lake was stunning, tall mountains surrounding clear blue water with huge pine trees.

It was heavenly.

 We picnicked on the beach and wandered around the trails surrounding the water.

 Later we rented a paddle board and decided that it's much harder to keep balanced with two people on board than just one. Ha! The experienced paddle boarding crowd on shore was probably getting a kick out of us amateurs!

After the lake we cleaned up and headed out to "Hot August Nights" in down town Reno. Where one of the largest car shows in the world was taking place. A seemingly never ending parade of cars drove down the main street and casino parking lots were filled with row after row of hot rods. 

 While in the city we decided to try the famous Awful, Awful burger at the diner in the Little Nugget.

It's awful big, and awful good, just like they say.

 The next days destination was San Francisco!

 We hit fisherman's wharf for some clam chowder and shrimp sandwiches on sourdough and then Ghirardelli for treats. 

(Salted Caramel banana shake, we love you!!)

 Later we road the trolley car and hit up China town.

 Where we got some pretty killer Chinese food.

 

 Adam's favorite part about the restaurant were the sea creatures waiting for their demise.

 On Sunday when we got dropped off at the train station we took the elevator to an empty platform with no waiting train. Come to find out we missed our train because of a miscommunication. After a bit of panic the wonderful Amtrak workers switched our ticket and we had one more day of vacation. Ha! Whoops. Tonight we'll go hop our train home and be there tomorrow morning. After traveling by train I will definitely do it again, it's so comfortable, cost effective, and very convenient, it takes longer than flying BUT when you sleep on the train overnight it's no big deal. We're already trying to decide where we want to go next!

Overall a great trip with great company!