![]() It was really snowing hard up at the top of the hill, but it lightened up as I came down the other side and was barely a flurry when I pulled up at my friends’ house just outside of town. It’s a pretty steep road, but it was cold up there so we did just fine on the climb. I headed up and over the Kingsbury Grade, which is the back way to South Lake Tahoe, and my preferred road up and over the mountains. It was snowing which was a shame because I wanted to make a stop in Genoa, Nevada’s oldest town, but it was just too wet out there so I kept moving. Once that was signed, sealed and delivered, I headed on out of town. I decided to fax it in because that seemed more likely to reach its final destination than if I dropped it in the mail and FedEx was happy to help me make that happen. There are a few benefits to coming from such a transient city. They were surprised that I could use a Nevada emissions test to pass my DC inspection but I promised them it was true. I stopped into Bob’s Shell downtown to get my emissions test done. I stopped in and had a coffee at The Roasting House, which had a great view out towards the valley, and then headed back down the hill to Carson City. I woke up early on Thursday and took another stroll through town and got some more photos with the sun lighting the other side of the street. I stayed the night just down the hill and it was extremely quiet out there. ![]() While others were welcome to perform, it was really some of the locals jamming out on stage and they were really good. The sun was going down as I left, so I wandered down the street to the Red Dog Saloon which was doing an open mic night. I chatted with them for a while and enjoyed their million dollar view from the huge picture window at the end of the bar. and three of the patrons were from just outside the city and south of Annapolis. ![]() It turned out that the bartender there was from Washington D.C. I enjoyed wandering up and down the main street through town and taking photos and stopped in for a beer at the Bucket of Blood Saloon. It’s one of the better “old west” towns that I’ve visited and maintains a lot of its frontier character. When the gold and silver played out, the town’s population dropped significantly but after the TV show Bonanza debuted in 1959, interest in the town grew and tourism became its main industry. Money from the mining going on in Virginia City helped build San Francisco into the city it became (and was until the fire of 1906) and hastened the separation of Nevada from the Utah Territory as its own state (The Silver State!). In its heyday it grew to a city of 25,000 people and had 36 schools and over a hundred saloons. Virginia City was ground zero for the Comstock Lode mining boom which took over 700 million dollars’ worth of gold and silver out of the surrounding hills. I left you last week in Gardnerville and when I finished this post I headed up through Carson City and on to Virginia City.
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