Scheduled trip: Palo Alto, CA - Utah
Actual trip: Palo Alto, CA - Fallon, NV (310 miles)

Nevada revisited
It was time to start the return leg of our epic journey. Although we had scheduled to stay one more day in San Francisco, we had to be back in Carolina before June 7. We thanked Ursine for her hospitality and headed off to I-80.

The first part of the day was rather uneventful; we passed Sacramento, the Californian state capital, stopped at Lake Tahoe and lingered a while in the beautiful surroundings. In the early hours of the afternoon we crossed into Nevada.

Nevada is a strange state in many ways. Prostitution is legalized, which is quite evident when you go through the state. For instance, in the middle of the desert, a house just off the road usually with a high electric fence for privacy is almost certainly a brothel. Gambling is not just confined to Las Vegas. Even the most backward hotels at least have some slot machines and maybe a real casino albeit much less glamorous than what Vegas offers. This cesspool of sin called Nevada is made to look even worse when it's compared to its eastern neighbor: Utah, probably the most pious state in the Union. Only in America does such contrast exist. It's like imagining the Vatican placed right next to Sodom and Gomorrah.

We had expected to reach Utah that day but it soon became clear that this was impossible. In fact we only made it to Fallon, a small, quiet town in western Nevada. We had two choices of entertainment: gambling or TV. We chose the former and went over to the largest hotel in town and started to throw some money around. The casino wasn't exactly up-to-date. The carpets and brownish interior spelled out quite nicely that we weren't in Vegas if anyone had forgotten it. After spending some time and losing a few dollars each we returned to our room and turned on the TV.

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