Reno

When we rolled out of Lee Vining, Yosemite and Mono Basin, we only moved about a hundred miles north, which put us back into Nevada.  We are now camped in Carson City which is our base for exploring Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Virginia City.

We’ve made two trips to Reno – “The Biggest Little City In The World”.  It has been a month since we have been in a city of any size so we had to get in a little shopping too.  But it wasn’t all work.  Gary got in a poker tournament at one of the many casinos while I played the machines a bit.

We figured that Nevada, being a mining state, might just have a mineral museum like we had visited in other mining states.  Sure enough, we found that there is one on the campus of the University of Nevada Reno.  We wound up parking at the north end of the campus and the museum is down at the other end so we had quite a tour of the University.  Shown below are some of our favorite specimens from this visit.

Gary had to grab the camera and capture some pictures of the football field.  He was telling me that Colin Kaepernick played his college football on this field, whoever that is.  We liked the look and the feel of the campus which is home to nearly 20,000 students.

 

We also took a quick tour of the National Bowling Stadium.  It has the nickname of “The Taj Mahal of Bowling” and was a part of a mid 90’s redevelopment of downtown Reno and an effort to capture away some of the tourist trade from Las Vegas.  Many tournaments are held in the 78 lane facility.  Movies have also been filmed there including one of our favorites, Kingpin, starring Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson.  We aren’t bowlers, but it was well worth our short visit.  I even had the chance to take the wheel of a bowling pin golf cart.

We also had the chance to take in some breweries in Reno.  Our favorite brew was a chili beer at Great Basin Brewery.  It was a very light ale but with just enough chili for a bit of burn in the finish.  It had been a long time since we sampled a pepper beer and it was a welcome return.