Yes Santa, There Is a Virginia City

After our time in Reno our plan was to hit the road for Lake Tahoe, making a stop on the way at one of Stacy's family's old stomping grounds, the ambitiously named Virginia City, Nevada. A mining town near the Nevada/California border, it boomed in the gold rush days and is now one of the most well-preserved "old west" towns. In the good old days it was haunted by a hoard of rough characters and celebs the likes of Mark Twain (and maybe still is, according to the lore shovelled to the tourists). Now it is stalked my more of an ice cream-eating, picture-taking kind of scoff-law.

Stacy and her family used to come all the time when she was a kid and she'd been telling me about it for years. It was cool to get to do some of things that she did as a kid, and its always fun to see how different things really are from the way you imagine them to be when someone tells you a story. I guess I was envisioning something a little less..., well, words escape me. I don't know why I didn't expect it. (I guess I've seen one too many "Brady Bunch Goes to the Wild Wild West" episodes and I actually thought you could still get caught up in it.)

The thing Stacy associates most with her family trips there was the train ride you can take from Virginia City a mile or so down the hill to an old mining colony. We relived Stace's fond childhood memories and took the train ride. The "conductor" was suitably corny in that Disney Jungle Cruise kind of way. Stacy, Poppa, N and I rode in an open-air car right up next to the engine. Grandma and L rode in the luxury coach car in front of us. Poor N had to relive all his airshow traumas every time the train blew its whistle, which was pretty much every thirty seconds. I guess there are a lot of stage-coach crossings in the area.

Among the sensory pleasures buffeting us on the way down the hill was a little mountain with a rock outcropping that made me say "Zoinks!"

At the end of the line we got out and walked about for a minute or two and admired the ample mining town vista before reboarding for the return trip back to VC.

On the return ride up the hill Poppa got a special treat - he got to ride with the engineer up in the diesel engine!

There was a subsequent three-way tie for the most-excited-kid award.

A memorable lunch*, some meandering about town's candied apple shops and tattoo parlors, and we were back on the road to Tahoe.

(*You'll have to ask Stacy about that one. I refuse to relive the moment.)