John slept very little, he got up at 1 AM to read his book and didn't go back to sleep. We stayed at the Hot Spring all day, went to the mineral spas in the morning, they were having some difficulty with the system, so only 3 of the pools were open. We chatted with other people, went back to the timeshare for lunch and afterward went to the pool and spa behind our building, they are freshwater and not mineral water. We both got very sunburned, no shade!
We came back upstairs, John slept awhile, then we walked over to the pizza place on the grounds and had a pizza and beer. There is also a fine restaurant on the premises, however, it is quite expensive and serves large meals. We enjoyed the pizza, finished all of it.
John was quite sleepy, so we went to bed early
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Walley's Hot Springs (Virginia City tour)
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1 Jun 05
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We drove to Virginia City and spent most of the day walking around the town. It is an interesting place, we both enjoyed it, I had toured it about 25 years ago and John had not been. We had a good lunch in the Palace bar/restaurant. We also took the 20 minute open air bus tour, the seating vehicle was pulled by a tractor, and the driver was the tour guide. Virginia City is built on steep hills, the roads are quite steep.
Virginia City was considered the richest city in the mid/late 1800 era - gold and silver were both mined there. It burned down in 1872 and was rebuilt, only 3 of the original buildings that did not burn are standing today. It is rich in the history of Nevada and the old west. Mark Twain got his start in his writing career in 1862 in Virginia City. Mining is still active around VC and other small towns in the area like Gold Hill.
We toured the museum 'The Way it Was', which had many many articles from the old days nicely displayed. We also toured the fire museum, which would have been more enjoyable if the talkative female volunteer hadn't talked the entire time we were in the museum. She had memorized the display signs and it was difficult to try reading them and listening to her at the same time, she was never in synch with what I was looking at! But, the old fire equipment was very interesting, as was some of the stories of the fires.
I bought a slot machine charm and a pair of earrings, John bought a fossil bowl. We did see a few interesting shops, most were just full of silly touristy junk.
We had driven Highway 342 through Gold Hill on the way to VC, very steep in places, on our return trip we drove down grade on Highway 341 which was a very gentle grade with lots of long curves. Much better!
I wanted to see the town of Dayton, an historic place 3 miles east of 341/50, the first gold in Nevada was supposed to have been discovered there. It wasn't much of a tourist area, a couple of old buildings, we didn't even find the museum that was advertised on the highway.
Stopped at a Walgreens on the way back to the timeshare. Once there, we had dinner, read and watched TV until bedtime.