Nevada - Day 7 - Carson City and Lake Tahoe

Grand Sierra Resort RV Park, Reno
Thursday, 7 April 2022

today's route

more detail of today's route

[It took me 12 minutes to get those 2 photos uploaded and into the correct positions.  I'm telling you, the slow internet connections are making life pretty difficult for me these days.]

Just after 8:30, we drove through Reno on the state highway (despite Google's best efforts to put me on the interstate) that took me past all the town's car dealerships and 2 more resort/spa/casinos - Atlantis and Peppermill - both with big time presences.

And not much more than a mile or so farther on I came to a warning sign with the picture of a trotting horse saying "Next 7 Miles."  Strange warning signs I see sometimes - the horses here aren't being ridden and are open range like the cows?

Nine miles from the main downtown area I found we were surrounded by more of those folded hills, followed by small farms.  Very rural.  I found it reassuring that for all its pretense at big-city-ness, Reno isn't much more than an overgrown farming town.

The road started climbing at those hills and I got as high as a summit that was labeled only with the elevation: 5,092', and a sign saying I was on a scenic highway.

Near Washoe City, elev. 5,035', I saw signs for a "High Wind Turnaround Route," which did not engender confidence.  They have winds so high big rigs have to turn around?  Often enough to have established a specific route for this maneuver?  I went on and had no trouble at all.

I noticed the trees were starting to leaf out - a hopeful sign.  And the snow was still about halfway down the mountains.

As you can sort of see on the 2nd route map, Lake Washoe sits near Carson City and has a state park protecting it from development on the southern shores - presumably to keep Carson City residents from moving out to lakefront houses and blocking access for others.  It happens.

I never saw a highway sign for Carson City, the state's capital, but I can tell you that it had 58,639 residents in 2020 and sits at 4,802'.  I was surprised to see that gas was much cheaper here than in Reno - a Sinclair station was offering $4.55/gallon on the way into town.

I passed an imposing old building labeled the Paul Laxalt State Legislative Building, now a visitor center.

Paul Laxalt building

Built in 1891, it was the first federal office building in the state (and the 2nd federal building, after the Carson City Mint).  That 106' tower housed the only clock tower in town.  The building is of the Richardsonian Romanesque style and has served as the federal courthouse, the US Post Office, and the Nevada State Library before being relegated to the tourism commission.

I passed the Nevada State Museum, which I'd wanted to visit.  It's only open 4 days a week, but today was one of the days and I'd've gone but they wanted to charge me $10.  I don't know - maybe I got ruined by all the money I'd had to spend in California - everything was so expensive there.  But I just wasn't prepared to fork over that much, even to learn the State of Nevada's take on its history.  I'll just stick with what I've gotten from the children's books I read before my trip started.

One little historical nugget from those books: one of NV's unofficial state nicknames is the Battle Born State, which comes from its entry into the Union during the Civil War.  Congress allowed its admission in 1864, even though it didn't have the required minimum population, because Lincoln needed another non-slave state and the Union needed Nevada's silver and gold.  

Another little nugget: during the 1950s and '60s civil rights movement, Sammy Davis Jr. refused to work anywhere that wouldn't serve Blacks.  The rest of the Rat Pack backed him up and, by 1960, all Las Vegas casinos were integrated.

You can see why I'd wanted to visit the state museum.  On another trip I will for sure - and next time I'll enter the state from Arizona or somewhere less expensive than CA.

In complete contrast to my experience in Sacramento, we found plenty of parking places across the street from the state capitol.  The capitol and the legislative building occupy several blocks of park-like land across the street from regular shops of all kinds.  We found a spot that had 2 free hours of parking - such a deal - and I took the dogs for a walk.

I'd never seen a bike rack that looked like this.

drinking water fountain in front of one of the Attorney General's buildings -
note the water fountain at the base for dogs
and see below for the plaque 

We crossed the street to the capitol, with me thinking we could walk along the sidewalk in front of the building.  Wrong.  The only "public" sidewalk there was through the capitol grounds, and a sign at the entrance said no dogs allowed on the grounds.  Look, I know very well that many dog owners are either incredibly rude or totally clueless about what it's like for other people to have to encounter the waste that they refuse to pick up from their dogs.  I've picked up plenty of what other people have left.  But to both ban dogs from the grounds as well as not provide another route - well, we walked through the grass outside the fence.

Nevada State Capitol

Pretty building, isn't it?  It was built in 1871 in the Neoclassical Italianate style.  It's the 2nd oldest state capitol building west of the Mississippi, which is saying something when you think about it (Arkansas's is the oldest).  Interestingly, the reason it took 7 years after statehood for them to build the capitol is that the state constitutional convention stipulated no capitol would be built until 3 legislative sessions had passed - most folks figured someplace more central than Carson City would get selected, so no point in spending money on a building here.  But Carson City it stayed, and the building got built.

We walked past the capitol and came to an open area where I saw a statue from a distance that looked - could that be Kit Carson?  I decided that area didn't constitute "capitol grounds" because we were outside the wall around the capitol - though I'm guessing folks there probably considering it part of it anyway.  Still, here's the statue, somewhat obscured by the very-well-functioning sprinkler system.

Kit Carson it is.

I can't blow that plaque up enough for you to read it easily, so here's what it said:

It was the winter of 1843 when Kit Carson, along with the John C. Fremont expedition, worked his way south from Pyramid Lake [north of Reno] looking for an easy route across the Sierra Nevada.  Carson, depicted here tracking his way through the mountains east of this location, was considered one of the best mountain men of the day.  His name is still synonymous with the wide open spaces and lure of the American West, an image we still cherish as part of our freedom and heritage.  It is the spirit and love of the West that we honor with this statue. 

Carson City takes its name from the Carson River, which Fremont named to honor Kit Carson. 

The dogs wanted to stick around and sniff (there'd obviously been dogs here before) but I didn't want to cause trouble - plus the sprinklers really were working well - so I hustled them back to the street.  Which is where I saw another historical plaque.

[It took me 12 minutes to get that photo installed here.  After the first 5 minutes, the whole downloading process erased itself and I had to start all over again.  That one did get downloaded but in the middle of the Kit Carson quote, so I had to fiddle with moving things around to get it in the right place.  If I ever get my blog posts caught up, it will be some kind of miracle.]

I've seen several of those "Road to the 19th Amendment signs" as I've traveled.  I think the last one I saw was in North Dakota, though I don't always take photos of them so may not remember.

Quaint downtown in the background, huh?

From there, we got back on the road, heading west for Lake Tahoe.  I've always heard it's beautiful and it was one place I definitely wanted to see while I was here.  As you can see from the route maps above, most of the lake's shoreline is in California.  But I was having enough trouble trying to make it to everything there I wanted to see, and I figured I'd visit the lake from the NV side.  So I am.

Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America, is the 6th largest lake by volume in the US (behind the Great Lakes), and is the 2nd deepest lake in the US, behind only Crater Lake in Oregon.  All of that is beside the point - people go there for its beauty.

I found on the drive there that it is indeed an alpine lake - 6,225' elevation at its surface - and I had to climb a mountain road to get there.  Fortunately, I've had experience now with mountain roads, so this one was no big deal in comparison.

I was driving through the Toiyabe National Forest on US-50, rightly designated a Scenic Byway.

I passed another of those bear crossing signs for the "Next 4 Miles."  Sadly, no bears in sight.  But at Spooner Summit, 7,146' elevation, a Bald Eagle flew right over us, which put a smile on my face for a long time.

Lake Tahoe, through the trees

I never did find a place where I could pull over to take a better picture than this one, but at least you can get an idea of the beauty here.

When the road went alongside the lake, it started passing quite a few houses, many of which looked like full-time residences, not just vacation homes.  At one I saw about 10 Easter blowup figures in front - you know, bunnies and chickens and like that.  There was quite a breeze and I wondered how they had them weighted.

The town of Stateline turned out to be what you might call unwelcoming to RVs.  I saw plenty of hotels and casinos (Harrah's and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and Harvey's with Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsey), but no place for RVs to park.  I found a city park - with signs all over the place saying "No Animals or Glass Containers Anywhere in the Park."  And I seriously wondered what on earth kind of place this was.  But we were all ready for a break so I found a spot we could fit into (thank goodness all over again I bought a small RV) in a parking lot not far from the visitor center (we couldn't fit into their lot) and near office buildings.  There was almost no place to walk the dogs, but we did the best we could.  At least the sun was shining.

Stateline is so named because it straddles the boundary between the states.  Before I could find a place to turn around I found myself passing a sign saying "Welcome to California," which is more than I saw when I first entered CA near Needles, so that was okay.  I turned around in an illegal place and went back into Nevada, and left town by a different road.  This road - another mountain road with only 2 narrow lanes and no shoulder at all and lots of s-curves - ran through a residential area for some miles, making the drive somewhat challenging.  I passed a ski area and came to Daggett Summit at 7,334' elevation, followed by a 9% grade, which I haven't seen one of in some time. 

Still, on that mountain drive I saw a magpie, a smallish woodpecker, and a view below of winding river and large flooded fields.  I also negotiated 2 hairpin turns and nearly constant s-curves.  And I passed 3 cyclists coming toward me uphill - separately - and can't even imagine the stamina and muscles required to do that.

I passed a sign saying "Major Deer Crossing."  Really.

Heading back north on US-395, I saw a sign near Washoe Lake that said "Vehicles Over 9' Prohibited When Flashing and Must Exit" with non-flashing lights around it.  I couldn't figure that out.  Did it mean 9' in height?  Which would suggest a tunnel or something - except when would a tunnel's height be lower and trigger flashing lights?  Or did it mean 9' in length?  Which limits out any vehicle larger than a passenger vehicle and when would that happen?  Suddenly semis aren't allowed on a major artery north and the only warning is this sign? 

Was this related to that "High Wind Turnaround Route" I'd seen earlier today?  If so, why didn't they just say so instead of specifying a height?  The whole thing seemed odd.

I'd decided to take this route rather than a state highway to the east running through Virginia City because I just didn't want to take the time this trip.  The famous Comstock Lode, discovered in 1859, was near Virginia City and by the early 1870s there were almost 25,000 people living here, making it one of the US's largest towns at the time.  It had 727 residents in 2020.  

This is where Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, writing under that name for the first time for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise from 1862 to 1864.  Which is some claim to fame.

I woke up this morning at 2:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, so driving this highway - which ran into I-580 - caused me trouble.  I was lucky it hadn't hit me earlier when I was back on those mountain roads.  But we made it back to the campground in one piece.

I went straight to the campground office to give Karen the Players card, and the first thing she said when she saw me was, "Oh, good, you came back."  She entered my card number and did some fiddling with the computer and told me with the discount, I could keep the expensive space I'd been in for the same price as the cheap space I'd rejected.  Hard to beat that deal.  Absolutely worth the $3 it cost me - and you could even call that the price of an education in the casino.