Here we are on the home stretch to Bellevue, WA We have approximately 684 miles to go, and we are definitely looking forward to being off the road. A lot has happened since our last post, so I will just jump into it…

We made it into Las Vegas after leaving Winslow, Arizona on Wednesday. On the route we got the opportunity to cross into Nevada over the Hoover Dam. The History Channel, movies, etc.. do not do the size and overall awe of the dam any justice. It was incredible.

 We also saw the new bridge they are building to eventually bypass the dam crossing, and the bridge is equally impressive. It looked like it was all concrete but had the same shape as many steel river crossing bridges like New River Bridge in West Virginia.

We then made our way into Vegas. It had been particularly windy so our day light view was somewhat obscured by all of the haze.

We met Chris and Angie my cousins, and had a nice relaxing evening. It was definitely not a side of Vegas that you would expect to see based on how it is often portrayed in movies. It was a lot of fun to take it easy and just catch up with Chris and Angie. We went to dinner, then visited a “locals” casino that wasn’t lacking any of the splendor that you see on the strip.

We prepared to leave Vegas on Thursday morning, making our way to Lake Tahoe, which is definitely a little slice of heaven on earth. Instead of making a bee-line for Tahoe, we decided to detour via Death Valley, and this was not a wasted trip. Death Valley was an incredible mix of landscapes and color. The one thing we realized is that you can have the biggest HD TV in the world, and still doesn’t compare to seeing the amazing rock formations and desert in person. One thing TV truly lacks is scale, because these mountains and shear drops on the side of the road are BIG.

After leaving Death Valley, we took the scenic route US 395 in California to Lake Tahoe. We had been on this road before, when we went to Yosemite National Park in 2008. We drove by Mono Lake again, a really cool alkali lake. Yosemite for all intents and purposes was closed. All of the roads into the park were closed due to snow.

Around 5:30pm, we made it to Incline Village on Lake Tahoe, where we took our vows in 2008. We stayed at the Inn at Incline, where a number of our guests stayed during the wedding. Also, Austin’s was open! Austin’s is a restaurant in Incline Village that we really like. We wanted to have the rehearsal dinner for the wedding there, but it wasn’t big enough to support our guest list. It was spectacular, as always, and despite our best efforts, we put a big hurt on ourselves with the amount of food we ate. If you are ever there, you have to order the Austin’s cheese fries. You won’t be disappointed.

The next morning we were greeted by a flat tire on the Altima. Thankfully we had planned to stay two nights anyway and could take our time getting it repaired. With the tire patched and aired up again, we headed to a favorite state park of ours, Spooner Lake. We finally got the opportunity to ride our bikes around this lake, which is just north east of Lake Tahoe on HWY 28. It was fun, despite most of the trails being closed due to snow. We still made our way around Spooner, and we found as a general rule, mountain bikes do not do real well on snow. We both took pretty good spills trying to live out any XGames dreams we had. It was blast despite the snow.

We left Spooner Lake a little wet and muddy, and headed to Sand Harbor to catch the lake up close. There we waited for Johannah and Vince, some friends from Houston who had moved to Davis, CA.

Together we took a nice driving tour around the entire lake and found dinner back at Austin’s.

Now we’re on the home stretch in to Bellevue. We originally had planned on dinner and a stay over in Portland, Or with some friends from Rice (Rebecca Sherman, Jeremy Gibson). However, the smell of our new home is in our noses and we might not be able to resist.