Reno (7/03/03)

7/13/03                                                                                                                                                          Russian translation here

I personally hate the whole Casino scene, and Reno is second-rate Vegas wannabe in any case... but Reno does have a pretty nice river close to downtown -- the Truckee River which is the only outlet of Lake Tahoe (into Pyramid Lake). So we decided to go hiking along the river while mom hit the slots (though even mom, who loves slots, went for a walk in the park near downtown along with dad). We got to see a lot of ducks, even a duck with ducklings in tow going down the river. Since I'm a sucker for bird (especially duck) pictures I've included one below...



We saw a couple of weird things along the way... the first was this "fish tree", where the top of the tree forks into fish heads. Click on the picture to get a better view!


Also, having lived in Riverside California for a large portion of my life, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Riverside Drive in Reno is located right next to a river... how about that? For those of you who aren't aware, there is absolutley NO river in the city of Riverside. So that's why I figure that they don't mess around in Nevada like they do in California... when you see a sign saying "riverside" there's bound to be a river there...


On the other hand, for some reason they decided not to just put in speed bumps to control traffic speeds. Instead they "calm" traffic by having these odd zig-zag thingies in the middle of the road so that cars have to slow down to navigate them properly. I don't think they work too well since I saw a Transam floor it through one of these... actually looked like a bit of fun, and if I'd had my car I would've checked it out personally. By the way, this wasn't an isolated sign, we saw at least 4-5 of these on our relatively short walk along the river bank...