Since we had left Almanor early, we had an extra day in the Tahoe area. I wanted to find a ghost town or an Old West backdrop or something historical, so we drove over to Virginia City for the day.
Dwayne will tell you the hair-raising ordeal of the climb to Mount Rose Summit. A quick search after the fact states that “[t]he 8,911 ft-high pass is traversed by State Route 431, which is the highest point of the highway and the highest mountain pass open year-round in the Sierra Nevada.” I would add an editorial that we saw almost no other RVs on the way, and we figured out why.
But after trying to kill Old Odd (hopefully we’ll come up with a better name for the Odyssey tomorrow), and possibly ourselves, we eventually found ourselves in the hot-hot-hot middle of nowhere, where someone nearly 200 years ago thought it would be a good idea to stick a shovel in the ground, since staying hydrated wasn’t a reasonable pastime, and found silver. Virginia City was born, and even COVID hasn’t killed off all the old blood-stained saloons.
The name of this museum sums up VC. After learning about old-time card cheating methods and the best way to build mines that don’t collapse too often, we took off to catch the Wild West Outlaws shoot-‘em-up at the local outdoor theater. I couldn’t wait to get my picture taken with the good sheriff and the fast-drawing bank robber, but the kids were having none of it.
After ice-cream o’clock, we toured the McCay mansion. Of course, the best and most expensive houses of that time still fall short of the conveniences of today’s modern abodes (even RVs!), but oh! how I love the stories, the hand-painted fabric wall paper, the Italian imported hand-carved mantel, the too-narrow stairs up to the small master and mistress bedrooms. Always fun to look, but I’m not sure if anything could entice our family to live in this ugly climate. On to Lake Tahoe for the next few days!
Needopedia 