Today we will be re-tracing some of the roads that we drove on yesterday. First stop is to visit at The Nevada State Museum in Carson City Nevada. They have a Lincoln Highway Concrete Marker out front.
This museum is well worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Carson City. Everything is so nicely displayed and described.
I liked this big Mammoth skeleton and tusks.
Back outside the Museum we found the Frontier Motel and Cactus Jack, both Carson City Lincoln Highway Icons.
I had mentioned to a lady in the Museum that I was hoping that there would have been a small display about The Ponderosa Ranch and the Cartwrights, but she seemed a little put off by my question, stating that this is a museum of fact, not TV fiction. She did tell me that the town of Virginia City was not far away and was well worth a visit to get that feeling of an Old West town back in the late 1800’s, so we took a side trip to Virginia City.
If you remember the show Bonanza, the Cartwrights would often ride into Virginia City from their Ponderosa Ranch. The present day owner of the Ponderosa Ranch has no interest in allowing the public onto his property, so the Ponderosa has been closed since 2004. Too bad, I would have loved to have gone there, but Virginia City will have to do.
Here are some photos of the road to Virginia City from Carson City NV.
As you enter Virginia City, the first thing you see is this impressive building. The old school House. I suppose this could be where Little Joe and Hoss got their education.
And the main street was full to overflowing with tourists and parked cars. This small town in America is not feeling the recession.
We had lunch at The Bonanza Cafe. It was the only Bonanza TV show related business that we could find. I guess that the images and notoriety of the show are copyrighted and therefore the town of Virginia City cannot ride on the shirttails of the popular TV show. I did ask if the Cartwrights were in town, but I was told that they were not.
We bought some ice cream for dessert at Grandma’s Fudge Shop across the street. We also bought a LB of fudge and I am enjoying some right now as I write this blog. Here is a photo of Grandma’s Fudge Shop to the left of the Silver Queen Casino & Hotel.
It was time to get a move on and get back out onto the Lincoln Highway heading West.
Back in Carson City NV we found the King’s Canyon Road, but it quickly turned into a dirt and gravel road. We felt that we had driven on enough rough roads and decided to give the suspension on the car a bit of a break so we turned around and headed back to the US 50 version of the Lincoln Highway.
We took US 50 into the Lake Tahoe area again and got some more photos of the lake.
We crossed the border from Nevada into California.
We arrived in Sacramento California and are bunking down for the night here. Tomorrow we will continue on into San Francisco.
Again today, we had blue skies and hot 34 C temperatures. I think we are going to find San Francisco a lot cooler, but that will be a welcome change from these scorching temperatures we have been experiencing.
If you would like to see all of our photos from today, you can check them out on my FLICKR site.
San Francisco, here we come.
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