Bonanza

Dayton, Nevada
Dayton RV Park

Another short drive today, the sun was shining, the roads are traffic free and in excellent condition.  Guess who drove today?  

There was a short stretch of road construction around Walker Lake.  We never lost sight of the snow on the mountains.  They have signs everywhere that say you have to have chains or snow tires when flashing.  Darn, we left our chains back in Arizona.

  There were all kinds of recreation areas around Walker Lake.

Typical view on today's drive.

We arrived at the Dayton RV park before noon.  Since it was still early we decided to drive down to the historic part of Dayton.  We didn't realize how close it was, or we could have walked.  

We stopped in the Chamber of Commerce and I don't think they get many visitors.  The girl was helpful and gave us some pins for Highway 50.  She warned us about all the wild horses in the area.  

Virginia City wasn't far away so we decided to drive over to it.  

The road we took said no trucks or RV's.  It had a 15% grade but we didn't think the road was that bad for an RV.

We saw many abandoned gold mines all the way up the canyon.

The sign says welcome to Virginia City the richest place on earth.

We would have loved to tour the Fourth Ward School, but it was closed until May 1.

Can you imagine a 4 story school with 14 class rooms built in 1875?

Parking on the main street was impossible with our long bed truck, but we found a free public parking one block behind.

Bill is still into the red light district which was referred to as "the sporting row."  The famous "lady of the night"--Julia Bulette was murdered in Crib #1 for her jewels in 1867.

The altitude was high for us at 6,200 feet and there were a lot of hills to climb.   It couldn't have been a better day to walk the streets of Virginia City.  I can't imagine how crowded it would be in the summer on a weekend.

The nice thing about this town is there were information plaques posted everywhere.

A lot of money was spent in this town--$38,000 on the turn of a card.

We've been to Deadwood and Tombstone but they can not come close to this town for western history.

Bill was in heaven looking at all these western hats.  I didn't tell him the second floor was filled with them too.

I was reading on the internet about the Ponderosa Saloon.  I read about the mine tours you can take from the Saloon.  When we walked in we found out the tour was beginning in three minutes.  We gave our $7.00 admission to the guide and the tour began.  I must say it was a large group.

He was very informative and did a great job.  We didn't have to wear a hard hat unless you were over 5'10''.  

We learned that there were only about 12 successful mines out of all the mines in the area.

This machine is a drill and was called the widow maker.

The lighter colored boards were added when they started taking tours into the mine.  The darker ponderosa pine boards are over a 100 years old.  Notice the birdcage?

The Ponderosa Saloon also had this bank vault on display.  

Legend says the $32,000 from the 1927 robbery is hidden somewhere nearby. 

Along the boardwalk are kinds of artifacts.

Here's a couple of street scenes Bill took.

If you removed the vehicles and replaced them with horses and wagons, it would look like 1860's. 

We wanted to visit the Firemen's Museum but it wasn't opened for the season yet,

I'm sure the fire of 1875 would have been a big exhibit in the museum.

Stu, Lloyd, and Eddie Joe--did you use this kind of equipment?

While this town had many saloons and red light districts, it also had some gorgeous churches.

We walked into a giant candy store, but it had so many different kinds, I couldn't make up my mind and ended up walking away without any.  

I had no idea that Mark Twain started his writing career in Virginia City.

We've been to Hannibal and I don't remember anything about Mark Twain using his name for the first time here.

When we walked into the building there was only one person there and a rope across the Mark Twain Museum.  It didn't look like much and I don't think it was open.

We spent the whole afternoon just walking along the boardwalk.

That yellow building is the opera house.

The windows on the second floor are decorated with signs such as painless dentist, and advertised a bath for one dollar, with an attendant.  Did you ever notice that every tourist spot has a red dog saloon? 

By the time we walked down to this end of the street, it was getting too late to check out this museum.

This is absolutely gorgeous country that is impossible to capture with my little camera.  Now let's go back home so I can watch Bonanza on TV.

Turtle Safely........