Koyaanisqatsi II -- A Road Trip page 23 We toodled along the road with still more desert outside, but there was a definite difference between this desert and the Arizona deserts. Here there was no history, no awesome natural wonders, no scenery changes, no magic. Here it was just a road with cars from all states travelling along it, and occasionally a beat-up pickup truck getting on or off an exit. You might say we didn't find it exciting like we did Arizona because this was the road home which is never as fun or interesting as the road leading away, but it was more than that. It was almost depressing. We got to Winnemucca and ate dinner at Jerry's Coffee Shop. It was staffed by Jerry's Kids, or might as well have been. The service was slow and nothing we ordered was what we got. Still, we avoided eating in a casino restaurant and that was wise. We ate more on this day than any other day of the trip by far -- probably because we had little else to do or think about. We decided to push on to Reno where we could get a cheap motel and then have an easy ride home the next day. We did see a few things along the way -- we saw some snow on the peaks to our left which was surprising because it was hot where we were and they weren't that far away. We discovered that Nevada highway patrolmen drive Broncos and they hang out in the median strip between the lanes. They act like they're going to jump out and give you a ticket but then they don't. The average speed of the cars on that road is probably about 85 mph. We saw a lot of tumbleweeds -- some of them stuck on signs and poles along the road and some of them would attack cars at random. We saw a lot of characters in other cars. The strangest was a guy in a red Datsun that kept playing catch-up/fall-back with us. We finally got a good look at the driver and he seemed like he must have been part lizard. Jason kindly offered to drive, but Barbara was on a mission by this point and had to complete the circuit herself. As darkness came, Lucy went to bed, and things started to get a bit more interesting because we could at least imagine that there were interesting things out there in the dark. We did see a few more UFO excavation sites and a lot of ABF-ABF double-trailer trucks. We saw a lot of restricted military areas and a lot of trucks carrying what looked like rocket parts. Getting closer to Reno we came upon some road work that put us way over toward the barrier between lanes. It was a little hilly and windy by then so there was a new driving challenge afoot, not just the same old sleep-driving routine the rest of Nevada had been. Maybe it was part of the work they were doing, or maybe it was some sort of road Braille to wake up sleeping drivers, but the tires began to beep at us. It was a regular intervalled beep, incredibly deep and loud. It could have been annoying but it happened to keep perfect time with the song we were playing if we kept a constant speed. Opening the windows only made it louder -- we could actually feel the sound of it.   Tell a friend about this site with a free virtual road trip postcard © 1990-2006 neonpages.com