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Day 1

Mount Rose
Downtown Reno

We had gotten in after midnight the night before and were staying with my brother in Reno for the first part of the trip. This was a family trip with our 2 children, ages 17 and 11. We went to Mt. Rose (30 mins outside Reno), which is a popular skiing resort in the winter and then to downtown Reno to walk around, look at the casinos, and have dinner.

Day 2

Virginia City
Reno Rodeo

We drove to Virginia City (40 mins), which is where the Comstock Lode was discovered. It’s an old mining town with saloons and old buildings, kind of what you think of when you imagine a “ghost town.” We then went to the Reno Rodeo at night.

Day 3

Truckee airport
Donner Memorial State Park
Lake Tahoe

My brother works at the Truckee airport so we got a tour of the facilities then went to Donner Memorial State Park. You can keep going west on 80 to get to Donner Pass, but we were meeting some other members of the family at Lake Tahoe so we decided to do that the next day.

Day 4

Donner Pass
Reno casinos

We drove out to Donner Pass and hiked/walked around the area. Very nice place to explore. Then my brother watched the kids so we could go into Reno and visit the casinos.

Day 5

Lake Tahoe

We met our nieces for some kayaking and a picnic on Lake Tahoe. Beautiful surrounding, but the water was really cold so we stayed in the kayaks and on the beach. We ended the day at Kings Beach Miniature Golf.

Day 6

Calaveras Big Trees State Park

We drove down to Sonora where we were staying for a couple nights to visit Yosemite. On the way we stopped at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, which is awesome and could be a great day trip from Reno (2.5 hours one-way). It was another 45 minutes to Sonora and we stayed at the Best Western, which was nice.

Day 7

Yosemite National Park
Ansel Adams Gallery

First day in Yosemite we went to the Ansel Adams Gallery and the visitor’s center to get our bearings. Even though Sonora is close to Yosemite’s entrance, it still takes almost 2 hours to get to the heart of the park. I wish we would have known ahead of time that there isn’t really parking at the visitor’s center – you have to park and then either walk or take the shuttle bus there. We drove around for a little while trying to find the parking lot. We drove through the valley and saw Upper Yosemite Falls and Lower Yosemite Falls. You have to hope for a place to park near those viewpoints, just drive around and wait for a spot to open up if nothing is available. Also, there aren’t any trash bins – make sure to take some bags so you take out exactly what you brought in.

Day 8

Yosemite National Park
Glacier Point
Tuolumne Meadows

This was a very long day. We drove back in to the park to Glacier Point, which was spectacular and should not be missed. The views here are definitely worth the drive. We then started back to Reno, which was a little over 5 hours if we drove straight through. We stopped at the Tuolumne Meadows, however, which were beautiful. Got back to Reno very late.

Day 9

Flew home
Year traveled: 2016

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Reno, Lake Tahoe and Yosemite

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