Vacation? Part 1

Ok. So me and the hubby decided to take a little break while we are both (temporarily) unemployed.  I was missing my California family big time and he was wanting to see his parents who now live in the Seattle area.  We left Utah the end of February in the middle of what was supposed to be a snow storm.  Said storm really didn't rear it's ugly head until we were in the middle of Nevada. 
Now we have traveled I-80 many, many times through LOVELY Nevada-but always in summer.  Only now do I realize how nervous my sister gets about the weather when she comes to visit every October from Reno.  Nevada has absolutely no regard for human life!  They do not salt the highways.  I can understand that in some places salt is not environmentally friendly, but the-middle-of-nowhere Nevada??  Come on! It's a flippin' desert!
Everything was fine until we got to Battle Mountain.  You know the place with the giant BM on the mountain?  It's slogan is "Battle Mountain-half way to everywhere" But really, really close to nowhere! 
The snow started to come down pretty heavy, and having an all-wheel-drive vehicle we felt pretty safe.  There were NO snow plows out, and only one lane was plowed.  The sand they put on the road (in lieu of salt) doesn't really help with frozen ice, and it's loaded with guess what?  BUGS.  It must be. That is the only reason I can think of that made all the stupid tweety birds come down and land on the road.  ALL OF THE TWEETY BIRDS.  We honked our horn, and honked and honked to no avail. We must've killed  about 100 birds.  The sound of their little bodies hitting the car was starting to make me feel ill.  So after about 40 minutes of driving 15-20 mph we got to Winnemucca. (Nothing was plowed there either)
We pulled off the highway because for one thing, Winnemucca is the first place from Utah that has a Jack-in-the box (love those tacos), and we wanted to give the plow people a chance to redeem themselves.    I think Craig pulled about 4-5 dead birds out of our grill. We sat at Jack in the box for about 45 minutes, (until we saw a snow plow) and then ventured back on to the interstate. It was smooth sailing to Reno from there, except as we got to Imlay we noticed that the "Thunder Mountain" historical  monument was GONE!  We always called it the "Bone House" and it was really cool. Really spooky, but cool.  I don't know why they dismantled it, but it was disappointing to see it gone.  We spent a couple of days in Reno with one of my sisters.  The weather forecast was more snow and we didn't want to drive over the pass (Donner) until it was clear.   Stay tuned for the second installment of "VACATION?"