Lots of driving and a little riding...

Dang it I lost Beth again...

So far we have been doing a lot of driving, but getting in a couple of good bike rides along the way.  Just outside of  Las Vegas, NV is a 35 mile paved bike trail loop.  It runs along Lake Meade for about 8 miles and loops around the mountain through Henderson, NV.  We only had time to do about 25 miles, so parked at a trail head and road the section that runs along the lake, out-and-back.  It is a really nice twisting, turning, hilly ride out to the lake.

Lake Meade from the bike trail

After finishing our ride, we headed back to the RV park for a quick shower, a bite to eat and gas, then headed north toward Reno.  It was another long windy drive, but nothing as bad as driving across northern AZ.

With the RV loaded with water, all our gear, the bikes, etc, we are getting 13mpg in the mountains with heavy winds up to 15.5mpg when the wind dies down (which hasn't been too often)

We made it to Fernly, NV, about 35 miles from Reno and spent the night in an a small RV park.

Climbing to Brockway Summit

We decided that we had enough time to take a little break from driving all day and set out to find a really nice ride around the Reno/Lake Tahoe area.  I found a ride on RideWithGPS.com (my current favorite bike ride planning tool at the moment) that would let us drive to Truckee, CA and ride a loop out to Lake Tahoe from Kings Beach to Tahoe City and back.  What a great ride.  The roads were busy, but with good shoulders and a nice bike path next to the Truckee river for a good section.  A big climb to our first mountain pass of the trip, Brockway Summit (7179'), then dropping to Kings Beach on Lake Tahoe.  What a gorgeous lake with the snow capped mountains in the background. 

Lake Tahoe

On our way back to the RV, the front brake on the tandem started making noise.  I have been having some issues getting the brake pads adjusted with a new brake disk on the front wheel.  But when we got to the RV I saw we had a broken spoke on  the wheel.  A quick Google search found a good bike shop in Reno.  The Google reviews were right.  The guys in the bike shop had a big assortment of replacement spokes, replaced our broken spoke and had us going again within half an hour.  Just in case, I bought 3 extra spokes to put in my bag of spare parts.

We are spending the night at a pretty "rustic" RV park near Honey Lake (dry as far as I can tell) about 70 miles northwest of Reno.  We are planning on heading toward Crater Lake National Park tomorrow.

Park at Kings Beach on Lake Tahoe