Virginia City and Lake Tahoe

Our original plan for Monday was to drive down to Lake Tahoe and see what there is to see. But Sunday evening we were doing some Googling and realized that Virginia City isn't far away. So we started the day there. The town sits on the famous Comstock Lode, one of the richest deposits of silver, inspiring a silver rush a few years after the well-known Gold Rush. We took a trolley tour around town (supposedly at 9:00, but the driver meandered in about 9:30). That gave us a good overview. From there we took the train ride out to Gold Hill and back. Both rides were narrated and we learned a lot about the history. (Virginia City was also a major town in the TV show Bonanza.)

Wooden sidewalk and typical shop

There was a lot of drunken brawling and fighting. The story is that the morning after the cleaners of the saloon had a bucket of blood from the evening before.

This school had 1000 students and was ahead of its time, with indoor plumbing. It closed down around 1936.

A typical scene looking out from Virginia City, high mountain desert.

Mining equipment abandoned

The Virginia and Truckee railway. It was supposed to be a steam engine, but we were glad it was diesel today, as I'm not fond of the soot from steam (it's not so romantic if you actually had to travel that way....).

From Virginia City we headed on to Lake Tahoe. All the roads were mountainous, with plenty of curves. We were surprised (perhaps we shouldn't have been) at the amount of traffic and people around the lake. Everywhere was crowded and we couldn't get close to the water. We finally found a park up the hillside where we ate our lunch sitting on a bench. There were beautiful Ponderosa pines everywhere.

We did manage to pull over and get a shot of the lake. Earlier in the day it had shone deep blue but by this time the sun was behind a cloud and it wasn't so bright.

Sunday evening we ate dinner at the Naan and Kabob, a Mediterranian restaurant I found on the internet, and only a couple of miles from our hotel. It was so wonderful that we went back on Monday evening; we couldn't think of anything we would prefer. So now we are regulars, I guess.

Minced meat kabob, outstanding!

Vegetable appetizer tray with dolmatas, hummus, falafel, baba ganoush and salad under some of the items. We also had a basket of pita (they called it naan, but I called it pita) and some tzatziki sauce.