A Long But Minimal Stay In Reno, NV

After kicking off our time in Nevada with a week in Ely, I drove on with our dog Truffles to Reno. Shae was still in South Africa running a tour there, but I originally had grand plans for myself for exploring the city and the surrounding area.

That didn’t work out as expected. At the somewhat last minute, I signed up to participate in the Million Mile Madness challenge with Frequent Miler. That meant I spent much of the next couple of weeks researching flights, trying to piece together a crazy itinerary where I’d eventually fly almost 35,000 miles around the world.

Spending all that time researching meant that I was mostly holed up in our Reno hotels and didn’t see anywhere near as much of the city as I’d hoped. Here’s therefore what’ll probably be a quick roundup of where we stayed, what we did and where we ate and drank.

Where We Stayed In Reno

Hyatt Place Reno-Tahoe Airport

We stayed a total of 11 nights in Reno, with the first six nights being at the Hyatt Place Reno-Tahoe Airport. I’d originally booked all 11 nights there, but as separate six and five night stays (Hyatt doesn’t let you book more than 10 consecutive nights with points as one booking for some reason). I eventually decided to cancel the five night stay in order to stay at a different hotel, but not because there was anything wrong with the Hyatt Place.

If you’ve ever stayed at a Hyatt Place, the room layout will likely look familiar as this is the format of most Hyatt Place rooms. There’s a corner sleeper sofa with an ottoman, a work desk, a mini fridge, a king bed and decent blackout curtains.

Breakfast is complimentary for all guests, there’s a fitness room, an indoor pool and, helpfully if you’ll be there for a while, a guest laundry area.

At the time of our stay, this hotel was a category 2 property in the World of Hyatt program. That means it costs 6,500, 8,000 or 9,500 points per night depending on if award pricing is at off-peak, standard or peak pricing respectively. For five of our six nights it was at off-peak, so it was nice getting to save on that stay.

Whitney Peak Hotel Reno

While at the Hyatt Place, I took a quick look on Google Maps to see what else there was to do in downtown Reno. When doing that, I noticed that there was a Hilton property downtown called Whitney Peak and checked it out on Google Street View.

My eyes bulged when seeing what its exterior looked like.

Yes, the hotel has a climbing wall on the outside which also happens to be the world’s tallest artificial climbing wall! It turned out that it also has a 7,000 sq ft bouldering park inside.

This hotel therefore fascinated me. The fact that it was a Hilton meant it could be booked with points, plus it was pet-friendly and so it wouldn’t be any issue having Truffles with us. Seeing as our Hyatt Place stays were booked as two separate stays, I was able to cancel the five nights at the end there and booked five nights at the Whitney Peak instead.

That worked out perfectly. Hilton offers every 5th night free on award stays if you have Silver status or higher, so we only had to redeem points for four of those five nights. The nightly cost for our dates was 46,000 Hilton Honors points per night which meant the effective cost ended up being 36,800 points per night courtesy of the 5th night free benefit.

This turned out to be a great hotel to stay at. Our room was far more spacious than I was expecting and it had lots of stylish elements, from a retro mini fridge to fun wallpaper.

The Whitney Peak Hotel Reno has a club lounge. You can book a room that has lounge access included, but I didn’t need to do that as I have Diamond status with Hilton which offers complimentary access to its lounges worldwide (you can get Diamond status with the Hilton Aspire card).

The spread in the evening wasn’t as extensive as some lounges we’ve been to, but there was a good selection of cheeses, meats and crackers, vegetables, fruit and other hors d’oeurves.

One other thing to mention is that it’s a very pet-friendly hotel as it’s also pet-welcoming. Rather than just accepting pets, they have a fun welcome pack for them which includes a collapsible water bowl, bandana, poop bags and a toy. Although there’s a $75 pet fee, receiving a doggie bag like this helps you feel like it’s a little more worthwhile.

I sadly didn’t take advantage of the rock climbing walls at the hotel, but it’s a good reason to head back there in the future.

Things We Did In Reno

Biggest Little Dog Park

Just a block away from the Whitney Peak hotel was the Biggest Little Dog Park. This is a great dog park downtown with Astroturf and separate sections for small and large dogs. Having this downtown was great and even better was that it was so close to where we stayed for the last five days of our time in the city.

Virginia Lake Dog Park

Seeing as I spent much of our time in Reno stuck behind my laptop, Truffles didn’t have a chance to go on many adventures. To help make up for that, I took her to dog parks when possible. The Biggest Little Dog Park downtown was the most convenient one when staying at the Whitney Peak, while when staying at the Hyatt Place I took her to Virginia Lake Dog Park.

Truffles likes people more than other dogs, but she made a couple of dog friends during our visit. Virginia Lake Dog Park is nice and spacious, with a large section for small dogs and and an even larger section for big dogs.

Virginia Lake

Virginia Lake Dog Park is right next to Virginia Lake, so we also took a quick wander over there to check it out.

Downtown Reno

In addition to taking Truffles to dog parks, when staying downtown I tried to take her on several walks as an excuse to get me out of the hotel too. Reno seemed like a fairly walkable city with a Riverwalk District that’s nice to go for a stroll along.

Nevada State Capitol

After getting back from South Africa, Shae, Truffles and I headed down to Lake Tahoe for several days (more about that in our next post). Along the way we stopped off in Carson City which is about half an hour south of Reno.

That’s because Carson City is the state capital of Nevada and so we wanted to visit the state capitol building.

Seeing as it was a moving day, we had Truffles with us which meant she couldn’t come inside. Shae wanted to check out its museum exhibits, so I waited outside while she went in. A few minutes later I got a text saying to come back because they were fine with Truffles joining us provided we carried her while inside.

I appreciated that they were fine with that because the museum area ended up being worth checking out, providing a concise but interesting history of the state, its geology, notable people and more.

Where We Ate & Drank In Reno

Pho Café Hong Kong Diner

We had some Uber Eats credits to use up by the end of the month, so I ordered dinner one night from Pho Café Hong Kong Diner. Well, it actually ended up being 2-3 dinners because this restaurant had some BOGO offers in the Uber Eats app which meant I was able to order a total of 12 pot stickers and two combo plates for only $21 or so.

The food was tasty enough, although the combo plate I chose ended up being much more celery-heavy than I’d been expecting which was a shame as I’m not a fan of celery. That said, it was great value for money.

The Eddy

On a sunny but slightly chilly afternoon, Truffles and I wandered over to The Eddy, a community space with a bar, food trucks and more. I enjoyed a couple of pints of Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat, while Truffles enjoyed getting all the pets from one of the kids there.

Café Whitney

The restaurant at the Whitney Peak hotel was called Café Whitney. As part of having Diamond status with Hilton, we got a $15 food and beverage credit per person per night, so $30 total per night. That could be used for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

I didn’t make full use of it due to having lounge access, but I did order a couple of meals from there. One was their soy-glazed chicken thighs entrée, while another time I ordered three appetizers – chicken, shrimp and brussels sprouts. These dishes were all tasty.

Shoe Tree Brewing Co

After visiting Nevada’s state capitol in Carson City, we still had a bit of time to kill before it was time to check in at our next hotel. We therefore decided to go for a quick drink at Shoe Tree Brewing Co as they’re pet-friendly inside.

I got a flight of four beers, while Shae ordered a Dole Whip slushie. She enjoyed her drink; my beers were fine, but nothing memorable. The four I ordered were:

• Gingie-gingerbread brown (a brown ale)
• Whiskey barrel aged imperial amber
• Douglas Dortmunder
• Coco burrito porter

Things We Missed In & Around Reno

As I mentioned earlier on, Shae being away for most of our time in Reno and me having to research my own round-the-world trip meant we didn’t see much of Reno. Here’s some of what we’d had on our potential list of places to visit in and around Reno that we’ll hopefully get to in the future:

• National Automobile Museum
• Pyramid Lake
• Dayton State Park
• Virginia City – apparently they have ostrich and camel races at some times of the year
• Bowers Mansion
• Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park
• Hunter Creek Trail
• Tom Cooke Trail