Day 2: Stockton CA - Battle Mountain NV

Happily there was a lot less traffic underfoot today than yesterday, at least once I'd got out of Stockton.  There are a Several of lesser routes across the Sierras between the Donner Pass and Yosemite and I think I've been over most of them, but CA-88 was a new one.  You must find it in the atlas if you can.  Once you get out of the Central Valley it turns all tree-y and twisty and uppity-downy, ultimately reaching somewhere over 8000' before dropping down into the relative flatlands on the east side of the mountains.  Some of it looks like this:

The only notice you get of having crossed into Nevada is that petril is suddenly a dollar a gallon cheaper.  With this in mind I held off refuelling until I got to Carson City and onto the opening section of US-50, having decided to forego the delights of I-80 in favour of the, er, not really scenic route because the two both traverse MMFD¹.  I was a tad surprised to find an actual lake in the middle of all this:

but it transpires that this is actually the Lahontan Reservoir and therefore doesn't really count.  US-50 across Nevada gives a graphic ilustration of the basin-and-range layout of the place, being broad valleys separated by mountains running from south to north until they stop abruptly because the Humboldt River is in the way.  US-50 took me almost but not quite all the way to Austin where a left run marks the south end of NV-305.  The north end of which being the T-junction in the middle of Battle Mountain, but I didn't need to go quite that far before turning off to be robbed by the cash machine round the back of the Wells Fargo bank.  $5 fee to extract $200 from the wretched thing.  Thence to the Super 8, home for the next Several of days.

Unpack everything and loaf around for a bit until hunger drove us out onto the streets.  To the Colt diner in the company of Al'n'Alice Krause, Ellen & Hans van Vugt, Joyce Lem, John Jackson and Adam Hari.  And now time for a nice cup of tea and a sit-down before I fall asleep and faceplant the keyboard.

The Kia, by the way, did 38.5 miles per titchy USAnian gallon between Carson City and Battle Mountain, mostly at 75 mph.  This I consider not bad considering it at least looks to have the æronautickal properties of a garden shed.

1. Miles and Miles of Desert, obv.