Westercon 76 Road Trip Day 7: Elko to Fernley (Chasing the Big Boy)

We took a little longer packing out of the hotel room than intended, and I had misread the schedule for the Big Boy at Carlin, so once we left the hotel, we had to skip my stop at Starbucks and simply get moving. However, doing so meant that we got some bonus pictures and made it to the train's first stop of the day on time.

( Chasing the Big Boy )

We went once again to Winners Casino, where they know that their all-you-can-eat spaghetti is all-you-can-eat. We ended up ordering more than we could eat, with both of us ending up with about half a serving left over. To our surprise and pleasure, they offered us to-go boxes for those two half-servings. We're used to AYCE not allowing any take-out, but this does confirm what nice people work here.

Had we not spent the day out in the sun chasing a train, we would have been home long before we refueled the Astro and left Winnemucca. Lisa had been driving most of today but had run out of energy as we neared Winnemucca — so much so that she had to stop on a wide spot of shoulder to have me take over driving. While I had expected that all of the caffeine I'd been drinking would keep me going for the remaining 215 km (135 mi), after a while, I found myself starting to regret having not holed up for the night at Winnemucca and going back home the next day after my mid-morning team meeting. It would not have been the first time that we bailed out relatively close to home.

Despite this bout of "get-home-itis," a disease that sometimes has proved fatal, we did manage to get home around 6:30 PM. There we found our home was almost uninhabitable from the heat.

( Too Darn Hot )

Being able to tackle this bonus rail-fanning on the Westercon trip was a real surprise. Our original plans had been to stay in SLC on Sunday, drive to Elko on Monday, then home on Tuesday. However, because I need to conserve PTO for the Worldcon trip, I had to cut the trip back by one day. It was only after we did so that we learned of the UP Big Boy trip, the schedule for which matched up well with our Elko-to-home leg of the trip. Even though we got very hot and I got sunburn despite wearing lots of sunscreen, we're glad we did it.

And as it happens, the saga of chasing the Big Boy isn't over for us yet.

Home from Westercon

Thanks to us "chasing" the Big Boy steam locomotive from Elko to Winnemucca, we took a whole lot longer to get home today than if we'd just driven straight through. We left Elko around 9:30 AM and got home to Fernley about 6:30 PM.

Lisa and I are both exhausted and despite sunscreen, I am sunburned. We have lots of travel stories and photos from the last two days, but I'm too tired to write about them or post the photos. I will try to get it done in the next couple of days.