RENO

Reno Nevada is our next stop and while in Tahoe we saw a commercial, buy one get one free nights at the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, so we booked it. Drive up after a 3.5 hour drive and the place is huge. Check in then, see the huge room with 2 giant beds and one real small tv but we smoke and watch some pre-season football anyway. Then i see in the local paper that there is a huge tomato throwing fight for cancer right downtown. We go down and we are an hour late, there are so many crushed tomato's in this park piled a few feet high. A few stragglers are still there throwing tomato's and people are all over covered in tomato juice and seeds. The festival is not over there are booths and bars set up all over the streets. Also there is live music with some white guys rapping on stage. We check out downtown Reno and eventually go back to the Grand Sierra. Starving we go to find some food and see a huge line at this buffet so it must be good. We decide to wait till the line goes down some and walk around the hotel. This place is amazing they have so much stuff to do like a bowling alley, movie theater, driving range, laser tag, a big pool, arcade, and of course a huge casino. We go back to the buffet around 8 and still don't get in until 9, which is a problem because they close at 10 and we want to put a dent in the buffet but we sit down anyway. Eleven they were still seating people so i guess i had nothing to worry about. It was good but nothing compared to the one in vegas great food and service. After that we were planning on getting in on this poker tournament but we missed the deadline so not wanting to lose a lot we sit down at the penny slots and ended up staying all night because the coctail server kept coming over to us every ten minutes. I used a 10 dollar bill in the machine and i think i drank 12 free coronas. We met some people that kept talking about burning man a festival going on right then in the desert. We thought about going until we looked online and saw the tickets were 300 for camping with no facilities.

Next day i slept in then checked out the hotel a little more. Then we went to the driving range, which is on the water so if you make your ball on one of the islands you win a prize. The furthest ones are prizes like a trip to Hawaii and the close ones are free dinner. I actually hit the free dinner one but it didn't stay on. Get some dinner then Jorge signs up for that nights poker tournament, i was not feeling lucky so i went and worked out instead. After i showered i went back out to the casino floor and he was still playing so i hit up the blackjack table. I put down 100 on the dollar blackjack and was up 40 bucks when it changed to 5 dollar minimum at midnight. I should have quit then but i ended up losing all but 25 dollars. So i took a break to blaze in the room. After some chilling i decide to go back out with the last 25 dollar chip. I sit down and meet these aussie guys from Melbourne who are going to burning man and they could not believe i was in the area and not going. I ask them why is it so expensive and they could not give a real reason but they say it's worth it. I ended up losing it and vow not to gamble anymore the rest of the trip.

Next day i call the front dest and get my normal late check out. Then it's off to Denver through Wyoming what a boring drive.