When Captain Cavedweller and I were in Reno for the RT Convention a few weeks ago, we took a bunch of photos.
I thought I’d share some of them with you today, just for fun.
We stayed at the Peppermill Resort. It was a lovely property with very nice rooms and plenty of places to eat and hang out.
One day, we ventured to Virginia City. If it hadn’t been freezing outside and pouring down buckets of rain, I would have taken oodles of photos.
On the way there, we saw a few of these signs.
We’re used to seeing signs with cattle and deer, but horses was new. And so awesome. We actually saw two groups of wild horses on our drive to Virginia City. Drat the rain. If it had been a clear day, I would have snapped a bunch of photos. (Part of reluctance to get out of the vehicle was the fact it was so cold and we hadn’t brought coats… it was May and supposed to be warm!).
We arrived in Virginia City where it went from pouring rain to a complete deluge. Seriously, I haven’t seen it rain that hard in a while. We wandered through a few stores, spent a small fortune on two glass bottles of pop, then grabbed some lunch.
In need of somewhere warm and dry to hang out for a while, we went to an old school house turned into a marvelous museum. The Historic Fourth Ward School is offers a glimpse into not only the school’s past, but also that of the area, especially the mines.
One room had several photos of miners. I was quite disturbed to see so many children working in the mines.
But the photo of the brash lad with a cigar left me utterly unsettled and so longing to know his story.
On our way back from Virginia City, the temperature dropped, it started to snow, mudslides dumped rocks all over the road (one of which we hit) and blew out a tire. If it wasn’t for a super helpful state trooper, one of us might have died of frostbite before the other one got the tire fixed. Did I mentioned we were on an incline?
We did make it back to the hotel in time for the event I had that evening. Whew!
Another day, we decided to take a drive (after CC purchased a new tire and got the spare back in place) to Lake Tahoe. Neither of us had seen it before.
I think the best way to sum it up is this:
Wow!
We drove from Reno to Carson City then headed north around the lake.
The blues were so intense and gorgeous.
And it was a beautiful day for a drive.
It really was quite spectacular to see.
We drove to Incline Village and wandered around the visitor’s center a bit. It was nice to get out and stretch our legs before we made the drive back to Reno.
I think we took more photos of the two of us together that week than we have in the past year (or three).
One big, exciting evening was the night of the RT Book Awards.
Garden of Her Heart received the RT Review Source Award. While I was super excited about my book being chosen for the award, I was a lot less excited about getting up on stage and giving a speech. Even if the speech was brief, it felt like it lasted half of eternity. (That’s actress Meg Tilly in the background. She was one of the emcees.)
So here I am giving my little speech. Introverts really aren’t genetically programmed to enjoy this type of thing.
And here is my beautiful award that I’m so incredibly honored to have received.
