This narrative starts about half way through my trip. I started in Reno and Davis visiting various friends, then camping with one of them around northern California: the Coast Range, the Trinity Alps, Humboldt Redwoods, and the BLM's King Range Conservation Area on the coast. Over the following few days I reorganized, planned, and took a couple of hikes. One was to the popular Loch Leven Lakes near Donner Pass. Another was an even more popular trail near Lake Tahoe, in the company of three people (two from Reno, one from Japan) chattering away in Esperanto.
But now I continue with the part I did alone. If you want to know generally where the places I mention are, go to MapQuest and ask for a map of Hawthorne, NV. This should cover the area including Reno, Tonopah, and Bishop. You can zoom in on any of these for more road detail, but Mapquest doesn't have any detail of the mountain areas.