Virginia City, Nevada and Lake Tahoe

 Samoa was intent on reaching Virginia City, Nevada, where her "sister" Val lives by April 30th and we did.  The next day was her gig at a cafe with an outdoor deck and yard.  

Everyone enjoyed hearing her sing, especially me.  

We spent time looking around this old mining town -- the folks here are an interesting community.  Very community oriented and very invested in their history.  Many old buildings have been renovated and there are museums, cafes, antique shops, and bars all over town.  It's definitely a tourist town and also the folks who live here now really embrace the somewhat wild history of the place.  The Comstock Mine is actually right under the town -- the richest gold and silver mine perhaps ever.  Not only did the wealth from this mine build gorgeous homes, banks, stores and even a world class opera house here, it's said the wealth from this mine also built much of San Francisco.  

Also interesting that folks here are largely conservative/libertarian in their views and quietly rejected the official Covid story.  Although the state requires masks to be worn in public places, everyone walks in the store/bar/restaurant with a mask on and very soon takes it off.  All the restaurants and bars have continued here face to face through the lockdown, with a nod to the state requirements and respect for people's individual choices.  They have a lot going for them in terms of health - the sun is shining and disinfecting a great deal of the time, there is great ventilation from constant wind, and people are generally pretty hardy.  Val thinks she had a mild case of Covid this winter - a really bad flu - and later tested positive for Covid immunity.  It's a friendly community and she got lots of support from friends bringing chicken soup to her door while she was sick.  People around here are unlikely to get vaccinated, though again there seems to be respect for each individual's personal choices.

Val came here a few years ago, while researching boom and bust cities for an art installation project and kind of fell in love with the place.  Her research also took her to the Bakken oil fraking fields in North Dakota where she did quite a lot of filming and interviewing.  Taking all her footage, she developed an art installation piece which she has shown at a number of abandoned industrial sites - an old steel mill in Pittsburgh PA, factories in Michigan and other locations - where she has projected the images of boom and bust onto the walls and structures of these abandoned industrial sites at night, with audio of interviews and sounds of fraking.  She also presented her installation here, projecting onto the walls and walkways of an old ore processing plant.

I can imagine how her images and audio might look and sound at night on these interesting buildings.

I hope she does her installation again in a place I can get to see it, now that I'm more mobile.  

Val also wanted us to visit some of the old cemeteries around Virginia City.  There is something so poignant about an old cemetery with the wind blowing through the golden grass.  Each gravestone tells a story.  

  

Too many gravestones told of a mother's loss of more than one of her children.

And Val's friend Bill took us on a free tour of the mine where he gives tours, one of many entrances to the Comstock Load, taking tourists inside and telling them so much about the history of mining here and of the city.  New techniques had to be developed here because of the unique conditions, which were then used in mines all over the world.  

Sweet guy.  

Samoa stayed in Virginia City to help Val recover from recent knee surgery, while I moved on to Lake Tahoe, which is only a short distance away.  There is a road that encircles the lake.  On the southern side, it is mostly vacation homes and towns.  But fortunately, a great deal of land along the lake has been conserved as national and state parks.  It is extraordinarily beautiful, far eclipsing my expectations.  It was formed over 2 million years ago, shaped during the ice age and is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountains, whose many streams pour down into it.  The water is still pristine, clear and an extraordinary blue.  

The day was overcast and too chilly for swimming, but the beach was lovely.  

A view of Emerald Bay, one of the most famous spots along the lake shore.