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11/03/2010
Having decided to head to Reno on a little road trip from San Francisco to break up the, what would have been a 10 hour drive, we arrived at around 3.30pm - 4 hours after leaving San Fran. The drive was amazing. It took us up through the mountains with some incredible views of snow capped hills and covered fields.
We booked our accommodation using a website that is cheap because it hides the hotel name from you until you pay so it could be anywhere within a certain area. We got lucky and bagged two nights at the Sands Regency Hotel for $35 a night which is a bargain and the place turned out to be quite nice. The room was massive with TV and ensuite. The hotel itself was also a casino, which was quite bizarre at first but I guess gives us a little taster of what is to come in Vegas. Having checked in and unloaded the car we had a wonder around the hotel which was huge. It had at least 4 or 5 restaurants, a bowling alley, bingo hall, then a massive casino. It even had a wedding chapel and ski shop! Managing to get lost we headed for an exit and onto the cold streets of Reno. We went for a walk trying to find our barrings and realised that it was basically made up of casinos and motels and that is really it. We found a bargain shop and bought a wooly hat each for snowboarding the following day and headed back to our hotel for some food.
At this point we were starving, having only had breakfast (as part of our 'pay for only one meal a day' money saving plan) and it turned out that our hotel was doing a bottomless spag bowl, salad and garlic bread deal. So we opted for that and it turned out really nice. Having scoffed our faces - as you uncontrollably do when its all you can eat - we headed back up to our room to relax and let the food digest.
The next day we woke up to news that the weather wasn't too good up in the mountains but having already paid and only the one day we went for it. We popped to the ski shop and rented ourselves some good waterproof trousers and a helmet and jumped on the shuttle to take us up to Mount Rose.
We lept from the shuttle into the snow, excited to get on it. We went into the ski building and got kitted up - Boots and snowboard. With all the gear we headed out the doors into the elements. It was a little bit windy but not too bad, but we needed our sunglasses to keep the snow out our eyes. The first 90 minutes were spent in a snowboard lesson, mostly on our arses. We were taught how to put the board on, how to stand, more importantly how to fall and eventually how to use the edges to turn and stop. It was great fun. A little bit like surfing we did ok. After the lesson had finished we popped into the cafe to warm up and get a hot drink. Sufficiently warm we headed back out onto the learner slopes to master turning and stopping before even contemplating one of the main slopes.
Having perfected the falling we stopped for lunch just as the weather started to get bad. The wind picked up and the snow began to fall harder. After lunch I gave one of the easier main slopes ago and shat myself. haha. It was longer than I thought and really fast. I made it to the bottom in one piece and we went inside to change to skiis to give that ago too. Having changed into skiis we hit the slopes again, however stepping out into an almost whiteout with strong gusting winds we only lasted about 10 minutes before giving up, handing back all the equipment and heading to the bar for a drink while we waited for the shuttle back down to town.
Back at the hotel we jumped in a nice hot shower and got ready for dinner of the bottomless spaghetti and salad again. The evening was mainly spent in bed watching TV after having a little flutter on the 1 cent slot machines having been given $5 freeplay by the hotel. We both managed to cash out almost all of it which paid for dinner.
the next morning we were up early for the long drive south to LAS VEGAS BABY!!!!
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