Virginia City, Nevada
Posted by Karen on 13-Sep-2009
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After The Great Reno Balloon Race, Lori and headed home, the long outta the way roundabout way. It’s 9am and we are wide awake, which happens when your day starts at 4am. We head south on Highway 395 and then east on Geiger Grade Road towards historic Virginia City. We take a rest stop at Geiger Lookout Wayside Park, which turns out to be an abandoned picnic area; no picnic tables or restrooms there anymore, but there are still wonderful views of the Washoe Valley and a dedication plaque to Dr. D.M. Geiger, the road engineer who first built this winding mountain road back in the 1860s. As we continued on, we came across a history marker for “Lousetown, Nevada”… it doesn’t tell the story of how it acquired that name, but can you just imagine saying you lived there! We arrive at Virginia City and find it fairly populated with visitors for the 50th Annual International Camel Races, which we weren’t attending today. We checked out some of the historic buildings like the Fourth Ward School and the MacKay Mansion and then we came in awe to the newly restored and retrofitted Saint Mary’s in the Mountains Catholic Church, which is just beautiful. The church was originally built in 1868, burned in the Great Fire of 1875, and rebuilt in 1876. Even though there were large event tents for the grand re-dedication covering the front of the building, you could still tell that it’s beautiful. The interior is awe-inspiring, there are gorgeous stained glass windows lining both side walls and the entry doors. There are three beautifully sculptured altars and all the pews are a wonderfully worn wood. Also around the side entrance, is a museum with lots of artifacts from the years. If you are in the area, this church is well worth a visit. We continued on to Carson City for lunch, but didn’t really so any sight-seeing, so Carson City will have to be a another trip. The final leg of the journey home was through South Lake Tahoe and over the Carson Pass of the Sierra Nevada to check out if the autumn foliage was changing colors yet; it’s not, so that will be another trip in a few weeks. :)
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Oh, wow…some phenomenal stained glass there!
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Karen Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 am
Ahhh, “phenomenal” another good adjective Carol, I was running out of them; the stained glass and the entire church was just grand.
As for are those “binoculars with the lenses missing?”… that is what I thought at first too, something to look through and focus the landscape, but as I wandered around more and eventually figured out it was an abandoned picnic/camp area, I think those were to hold poles for shade or something. Most every picnic site had one along with a crumpling BBQ pit and, what I believe was, a fire pit filled in with cement. It was all very weird, no signs or anything, just a spot to pull over and park and quite a few people were wandering around with us.
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