Years ago I learned to never chose shortest route unless I was prepared for an “interesting” drive. Today I forgot that lesson. As we were leaving Desert Rose RV Park in Fernley NV to go to Virginia City NV in the Jeep, I was not happy with the fastest route which was largely Interstates. I chose “Shortest” and within a couple of miles I was taking a turn on to a nice gravel road which shortly joined a paved residential road. I looked at the overall route and it seemed we were cutting a corner from 95A to 50A saving several miles so we continued, on gravel. 

I became a bit disconcerted when one of the “turns” was on to a not yet existent road. The GPS gamely recalculated and the next turn took us up and over the  hill ( I use that word rather than mountain because out here it was a hill, in the East it would be a mountain) to US 50A eventually to US 50 eventually to “No Name Road” which ultimately became 6 Mile Canyon Road which ends in Virginia City after 6 miles. 6 Mile Canyon Road is clearly marked “Steep, Narrow, Tight Turns NO TRUCKS” It was just fine in the Jeep. 

Virginia City sits on top of hundreds of miles of mining tunnels driven in search of silver and gold which was found in large quantities. If any city in the US can claim to have roads paved with silver and gold it is this one since the miners were busy discarding blue muck to get to the ore, they even used it to build roads until it was pointed out that the assay on the material was as high as on the ore.

We took a tour of one of the mines, that started by walking through an early bank building through the space where the vault was originally situated  directly into the mountain behind the building about 300 feet. After that tour we had lunch in a deli behind an ice cream and candy store just down the street from the mine tour. We took a trolley tour of the town that provided much more history. Much is closed in particular the Mark Twain Museum and the Silver Queen Hotel. We did enjoy one further stop back at the place we had lunch to buy some peanut brittle and a single ice cream scoop for each of us. 

To return to the coach I let the GPS choose the fastest route which had us swing through the edge of Reno on two Interstates.  It was fast, it was boring.