Day 9 - Carson City

Shacks in the middle of nowhere
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Today Charlotte and I said goodbye to Jenn and Ron and headed off out of Vegas up to Carson City in the north of Nevada. The journey for the first 100 miles was fairly uneventful but we stopped in Beatty for the memories!! However, after I filled up with petrol I noticed a trail of liquid leading from Thelma down towards the shop I was emerging from. After peering underneath the car we saw that it was definitely dripping from the car. This put us both into a state of mild/moderate panic as we were in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal (again, I had no phone signal all day again). We peered at the leak again for a bit before deciding to return to the shop and ask someone who might know about cars as we didn’t have a clue what was wrong with it. All I know about cars is how pretty they are and how fast they go. The extremely large man behind the counter whom we accosted firstly looked us both up and down before asking if it was a rental car. We replied yes to which he started to chuckle and said that it was the condenser on our air conditioning that was dripping and it was perfectly normal. He then gave us a look which managed to combine both ‘girls’ as well as ‘damn tourists’ in one, which I thought was quite impressive. Feeling more reassured that Thelma was not going to explode in the middle of nowhere Charlie took the wheel for the first time. This was all good for about the first hour. However, within one hour of Charlie taking the wheel some blue and red flashing lights came up behind us. After considering if he just wanted to pass us or not for a while we came to the conclusion that he did not. And in actual fact his lights were flashing for us. So Charlie pulled over and we waited. Mr State Trooper man got out of his car and appeared at the window. He then asked if why we were driving at 86mph when the speed limit was 70. Charlie replied that there was no reason whatsoever, and then added ‘sorry’. After producing her passport, driving licence and the rental car agreement and smiling sweetly and talking about our holiday he let us go with no other questions. We like Mr State Trooper man. And also he was rather good looking too. However, Charlie is now a criminal. The remaining portion of the journey was distinctly uneventful after this, although we did pass a beautiful lake in the middle of nowhere called Lake Walker and also many tiny settlements either extremely dilapidated or abandoned. These were a bit creepy and were not the sort of places you would want to stop in. However, we have made it to Carson City which is really small. The motel we are staying in is rather average but it is cheap at least but no internet which is a bit annoying. We went into the centre of Carson City (which takes 5 minutes to walk around) and took a couple of photos. It is quite pretty but that is about all the nice things you can say about it. I don't think residents around here have ever seen two girls walking around unaccompanied by a gentleman (if you can call them that). The amount of stares and whistles we got in 5 minutes was shocking. I was less than impressed. We decided to leave the main street behind and look at a church, cultural beings that we are! However, on the way there I was stung by some evil insect from hell for no reason. My tolerance for this town was rapidly diminishing. It diminished even further when we spent 20 minutes searching for somewhere to eat. We found 3 restaurants in Carson City. We picked the one that had the most people in it (all 5 of them) and had some pizza. It was fairly average and the restuarant was shutting when we left at 8.15. Tomorrow we go off to Lake Tahoe and Sacramento so we leave the desert behind at last – it does get monotonous after a while.

Criminal Charlie
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Distance travelled today – 454 miles.

Distance travelled today - 454 miles

Bearwatch – 0.