Our tour guide was a former teacher very interested in the rich history of the state of Nevada, which I won’t relate here because you obviously can look it up elsewhere on the Web, but her knowledge and enthusiasm made for anything but a boring monologue. Before we made our first photo-op stop at a vista, she pointed out a herd of feral horses grazing at the side of the road—very cool—and told us about local efforts to have the horses captured and adopted. It seems that there a too many horses to be sustained by the food and water on the free range, so many of them die in the scrub. Yes, well, animals die, don’t they? Don’t we all? I’d guess that before mankind came to Nevada, all the horses eventually died in the scrub. If I were a horse, I’d rather live a short free life than a long contained one. But that’s just me.
Outside Virginia City, we boarded a train that took us past the ruins of several silver mines and their abandoned towns. In contrast to our school-teacher-cum-tour-guide, the conductor on the train sounded as though he was reading from a script with which he had long become bored. Too bad, because the area has a rich and colorful history that our tour guide imparted after the train ride. Her stories would have been nice to hear as we saw each mine.
We didn’t have enough time in Virginia City, barely enough time for lunch. Because we tend not to eat upon waking, we were in need of some sustenance. We went into a local restaurant and sat with a submariner from Texas and chatted while we had a nice breakfast for lunch.
Like most summer days out there, the day was hot and dry. After another photo op, I went to the cooler on the bus to pick up a nice bottle of chilled water. All I found were a couple beers and about eight little chopines of Merlot. Greaeaeaeaeat. Apparently some fellow travelers anonymously allowed us to display our generosity by buying them three bottles of water. Had I known, I would’ve bought extra bottles for those poor souls. I have never done well in warm weather and was miserably hot and listless until after our next stop, where gratifyingly cold water could be found in the gift shop.
That stop was at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, where we rode an antique train pulled by a steam powered locomotive for which, I must admit, I have little appreciation. The reunion group did have a few train enthusiasts who got quite a kick out of riding with the engineer and ringing the bell! They were like little kids in a candy store up there and one couldn’t help but grin at their delight.
We were back in Reno just after four, just in time for The Nap. We woke up a little late, cleaned up and headed out to a Basque restaurant not far from the hotel. They serve family style, no menu, but you do get to select from a handful of entrees. That night, the choices were steak, salmon, leg of lamb, and sweetbreads. We sat with a family of five from Fallon, NV, all adults, whose exact relationships were a little hard to determine. Based on their apparent ages, they might have been two generations or three. The youngest was in his early twenties and worked on the new geothermal plant under construction in Reno. That was nice, because we saw the construction site on our tour earlier in the day, and he was able to tell us a bit more about it. Anyway, we had good company to round out the meal and no one walked out hungry.
We went back to the hospitality suite for a few more laughs and to pick up a bowl. On the tour bus, we met Chris and his wife Georgianne, who makes baskets out of cloth. She uses strips of cloth, much like the tubes used in rag rugs, and stitches them in a circle with a zig-zag stitch. It’s similar to putting together an oval rug, but the gradation in ring sizes is not great enough to allow the rings to lie flat. Voila! A bowl. She figured that since the guys got mugs and other souvenirs, the women should have something to take home, too. So she brought enough for all of the submariners’ wives and SOs. How nice is that? Then she took orders (gratis) from anyone who didn’t particularly like the color schemes available (how snobby is that?) and promised to make and send them after the reunion. Here’s our bowl:
Once again, we closed up the hospitality suite. Tomorrow would be a free day with the reunion banquet at the end.
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