Tuesday April 2 2013

We got showers and dressed and drove down to Carson City, which is about 30 miles south of Reno. Carson City is the capitol of Nevada and is a decent size city and sets between several mountain ranges. This entire area is beautiful as even in Reno, the mountains are all around and most of them are snow covered. We drove on to Lake Tahoe. The road we drove was nothing but hills and curves and I thought we would never arrive anywhere that was civilized. Mostly the terrain was mountains and open fields of rocky soil. We drove probably about 20 miles from Carson City before reaching the town of Lake Tahoe. The setting of the town is breath taking but it is so commercialized that it's hard to find an area to view the beautiful lake and mountains. There is basically nothing here except ski areas and shops selling ski apparel. Guess that should have been obvious but it reminds me of Jackson Hole, Wy, which at one time was my favorite area before it became so overridden with shops and people. The main difference in these two areas is that Jackson Hole is in the valley between the mountain ranges and Lake Tahoe is at the top of the mountains. We drove through the town and When we left we came out a different road that went back to Carson City. Once we got a short distance out of town, we could see the lake and mountains and it was absolutely beautiful beyond words. The mountains are all snow capped and the lake is such a beautiful blue it's hard to believe it's real. We stopped at a state park on the way out of town and walked on a path into the park so we could see the water and mountains and took a few pictures. I found a huge pinecone laying on the ground so I walked on down farther into the park to try to find at least one more to give to the granddaughters. Larry also looked with me and we ended up finding 5 huge pinecones so figured I would also give Leslie and Taylor one. They were so unusual as they had sharp sticker like things on the edges of the pinecone. Taylor and Kyle went to Alabama, Georgia or one of the Southern States when Morgan was young and brought back pinecones much like these. We drove back through Carson City and then took another mountain road that went to Virginia City, NV. Again we drove around and up and down until I felt car sick by the time we finally arrived. While driving through the mountain road, there were beautiful, huge homes built on every peak as we ascended the mountain. Larry brought up an interesting question about how these people get water since it is impossible to drill into the mountain and find water. I thought about that a lot and wondered just how expensive it must be to build here. When we got to Virginia City, it was perched on the mountain about 7000 ft up. It is an old mining town and looked like another tourist trap with many gift shops and old saloons. We were starved by the time we got there as it was about 3:00pm. We picked out a saloon and went in to check on the menu. We decided to have sandwiches, I had the french dip and Larry had a Rueben. They were both unbelievable delicious. We, of course, had a beer with our meal and waddled out of the Saloon as we were stuffed with food! We walked around the town and looked in the shops but everything was very expensive so bought nothing. We left around 5:00 to make our way back down the mountain side. Larry loves to take the curves at a break neck speed and I asked him several times to slow the pace. The road was good but pretty narrow with huge drop offs. We could see all the way to Reno from the top of the mountain road and the sights was pretty unreal! We got back to RV park and again I was exhausted as it was a very long day. The planes were coming in one after the other up until I passed out for the night. When we were downtown Reno yesterday, there were signs everywhere, welcoming the bowlers so I assume that is the reason for all the air traffic.