October 2003

Virginia City, less than an hour away from Reno, is a step back in time to the Comstock Lode gold and silver mining days when Virginia City was known as "The richest city in the world." Today, far fewer than the 30,000 of those days make their homes here, but one can get the flavor of the old days by walking the boardwalk and hiking the hills. We ate lunch in one of the saloons while watching the Purdue football game on TV...rather incongruous! Later, we heard live music coming from the Bucket of Blood Saloon just down the street, so walked in and found an outstanding "cowboy band" playing...David John and the Comstock Cowboys ( www.comstockcowboys.com ). After listening to their music, we walked away with 2 of their CDs.

The town of Virginia City...the photo doesn't show the steep hills that the town is on, nor does it convey how remote this town was! You can see a lot of the old mine tailings scarring the hillsides.

Above, the Comstock Cowboys in the Bucket of Blood Saloon; a street scene.

We visited Lake Tahoe for the weekend...fantastic scenery and weather.

The Tahoe Marathon was going on while we were there, so we had to find solitude in out of the way places...only walking a few hundred feet often removed us from the crowds of people that were in the Tahoe area for the weekend. The photo on the left was taken in the Tallac region, a bygone era of pre-1900 "cottages" that are being preserved, along with the Jefferson Pine forest surrounding it. The other photos are of Emerald Bay which one could view forever.

Our view from our RV park...repeated all around us here! (Actually, the photo shows the mountains further away than we really see them...They are looming right up in front of us.)

See October for some of our travels for October as we explore the area around Reno.

See September for more on our fabulous trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota...one of our favorite places now!