Duke and I are in Manchester, Iowa helping clean out his Dad’s house. We found this suitcase in the attic. Can any one guess why it says Keokuk on one side and Ames on the other?
The New Road from Interstate 80 into Sierra Canyon is Open
Anyone who has ever visited us has experienced the 6 roundabouts that you have to go through to get to our house in Sierra Canyon. If you were coming from California this meant going to exit 9 and then essentially doing a u-turn after getting off the freeway and going five or so miles back to the west.
As long as we have lived here they have been working on a new road which comes into the back side of Sierra Canyon. The long awaited road opened last Friday. If you are coming to our house from the west you exit 80 at the first exit in Nevada (exit 2) and drive through Verdi to the new road Somersett Ridge Parkway. If you are coming from the east you get off 80 at exit 5 and essentially do a U-turn at the new roundabout to get on Somersett Ridge Parkway.
It is very exciting. The new road makes a huge improvement to our drive into Reno. It will be interesting to see when the new road get on to the mapping sites.
Updating my Blog Roll with some Local Reno Blogs
I'm adding some Reno blogs to my list of blogs I always read in the side bar.
- Local So-and-So – Be Interesting is the golden rule of blogging. Ron is a new blogger who is writing an interesting blog from the start. We both attended the Nevada Republican conventions and have enjoyed comparing notes on the circus that is Nevada Republican Politics. His post about the alternate convention gives a different perspective than mine.
- Reno Realty Blog – We moved into our house in Reno exactly one year ago. It has been fun to explore Reno and learn about what is going on. This blog about Reno real Estate is always interesting and I've picked up lots of interesting tid bits about neighborhoods, prices, and Reno by reading it. The latest post about a Real estate auction in Somersett (our development) has interesting comments about real estate auctions and whether they are real.
- Downtown Reno News – Downtown Reno is Great! The guy who writes this blog lives downtown. He walks his dog through downtown every day and chronicles what is happening as Reno continues to improve the downtown area. In his side bar he comments how downtown Reno was a dump 7 years ago and now in his words Reno has:
"a thriving community downtown. New retail businesses are popping
up every month, there are actually neighborhoods and districts forming
in the downtown Reno area, and the river park draws a huge number of
people in the summer. This winter, the ice rink has been packed every
single night it is open."
Nevada Republican State Convention Alternate Group Tries to Reconvene
Last April the Nevada Republican party held the state convention to elect delegates to the national convention. The convention didn’t go as scripted by the party bosses and the Ron Paul faction of the party was able to pass a rules change that said all nominated delegate candidates should be voted on. Soon after that the convention chairman abruptly recessed the convention, saying it would be reconvened at a later date.
I am a state Republican delegate and since the April convention I have received announcements about two different attempts to reconvene the convention. The official party date to reconvene the convention is Saturday July 26.
Yesterday a splinter group of Republicans who feel that the state party is trying to disenfranchise them reconvened the convention on their own. Most, if not all, of them are Ron Raul supporters who feel that the Nevada Republican bosses are trying every trick in the book to make sure that the Nevada delegates to the national convention are McCain supporters.
I received the announcements about the alternate convention. I didn’t want to contribute to their numbers and to their ability to get a quorum but I was curious about the convention so yesterday I went to it, got a visitor badge and listened for a while.
It certainly wasn’t a diverse cross section of Republicans. There was unanimous support to nominate and elect Mike Weber as chairman. I called Weber a jerk in an earlier post. I’m sorry about that. You have to admire someone who cares so passionately about politics and who is wiling to work so hard for what he believes in.
It was very clear that Weber and his friends had scripted this convention to take the steps that they believe will allow them to make a case for their delegates being recognized by the national Republican Party. Weber said that to make the case for yesterday’s convention being official they have “a small hole to get through”.
They made a big deal of the fact that a list of the delegates to the April convention was never released. They announced that delegates not present at yesterday’s continuation of the April convention are in dereliction of their duty and therefore the 352 delegates present yesterday constituted a quorum. I left before they elected delegates but Local So-and-So another Republican blogger who attended yesterday wrote a good post about the convention .
While I was there I did get interviewed by the Associated Press reporter, Martin Griffith and I got quoted in this mornings paper. As I said to Griffith it doesn’t bode well for McCain’s chances in Nevada that 352 Nevada Republicans were willing to go through all that was necessary to make this alternate convention happen.
On the other hand, there were 1,347 delegates at the April convention. If the 352 delegates present yesterday were enough to reconvene then wouldn’t 5 also have been enough to reconvene. It doesn’t seem to me that the delegates elected yesterday should be seated at the national convention. I wonder how many people will attend the ‘official ‘ state convention at the end of July. This saga will be continued.
Mike Weber being interviewed by AP reporter Martin Griffith.
The rest of my pictures from the convention are on Flickr here.
Hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail from Mount Rose Summit to Brockway
The last few days the smoke from all the California fires was so bad in Reno that the sun was a weird unearthly shade of mauve. Our hiking group was supposed to hike the Tahoe Rim Trail between Brockway and Tahoe City on Thursday but the hike was canceled because of the smoke.
Duke and I decided to do a section of the Tahoe Rim Trial on our own if the smoke up on the rim wasn’t too bad. We decided to do the section from Mount Rose to Brockway. This section includes the highest Point on the rim trail – Relay Peak at 10,338 feet. When we reached the Mount Rose trail head the smoke was mostly below us. Four miles into the hike on top of Relay Peak looking west into California the smoke formed a dark brown line on the horizon.
For most of the hike we couldn’t see the lake because of the smoke even though this section of the trail is supposed to have tremendous panoramic views. In this next picture you can just make out the outline of the shoreline.
There was still a little bit of snow on some parts of the trail. We filtered water and filled our water bottles from a wonderful spring about a quarter of a mile before Mud Lake. The wild flowers were stunning. Twenty miles is a long way to hike and I was glad when we reached the truck but it was a great day and I really enjoyed the hike. My Flickr pictures of the hike are here.
Marion's Blog 