Virginia City and Lake Tahoe

It is cold and rainy AGAIN so we have breakfast and decide to drive in our warm truck to Lake Tahoe. We can see that we’re not going to have nice weather to visit Lake Tahoe, so we might as well at least drive around the lake (we were hoping to do some hiking and biking).

As we’re driving south from Reno we decide to make a slight detour and stop at Virginia City, where the Comstock silver lode was discovered/mined. The old town is interesting to walk around.

Joe and I have fun at the one saloon:

We decide to have lunch in Virginia City, but none of the restaurants look very interesting. Years ago (20+) when we were here we remember eating at the Bucket of Blood Saloon, but they no longer serve meals. We end up eating Chinese food in a building that apparently used to be a “house of ill repute”. Yes, we ate lunch in a restored whorehouse. Strange. I was glad that the inside didn’t have any reference to its’ colored past.

On the way to Lake Tahoe we pass through Carson City, the capitol of Nevada. The town seems too small to be a state capitol:

We drive up the mountain to Lake Tahoe. We drive around the lake, but the weather doesn’t really cooperate. When we get to the most picturesque part of the drive it starts to rain/snow.

Oh well. I guess this area is nice in the summer when it’s warm and not raining. However the 2-lane road around this lake that has hundreds and hundreds of homes must be clogged with traffic in summer.

Our drive over the mountain home is snowy,

but once we get near Reno the snow stops. We return to the RV park for dinner and it starts to rain again so we call it a night.