Our tenant Rob, who is renting our house for a month while we're away, tells us to go visit the Amazon.com warehouse, which is very secretive. We are curious. We try to find it according to the directions on the internet. The name on the building we find is Quebecor Retail Division.
There is a funny sign along the way at the Pawn Shop: Clearance Sale. That just strikes me as odd.
After much searching, I finally find a cowboy hat for my grandson Nathan. Garage Sale signs along the road have led us off into the desert to little back road with small houses and trailers. The hat is red, paper-based, and costs 50c!
On our visit to Virginia City, where many of the shopkeepers are dressed in authentic miners' outfits, or like cowboys or prostitutes, we are interested in the old gold and silver mines. There are lots of curio shops and saloons, in restored Victorian buildings. 10,000 buildings were destroyed by fire in 1876. The merchandise ranges from very expensive antiques to Made-in-China "chotchkes". There are slot machines everywhere.
Smoking is still allowed in many places out West and it seems that even where it is not allowed, the enforcement is not great. Today we are in a saloon in Virginia City called Bucket of Blood and the Comstock Cowboys are playing some really great music.
We are dancing away and all of a sudden these three people behind us light up, despite the No Smoking signs. Noone from the Saloon says anything, and these are tough-looking motorcycle folk. We are not about to cause a scene, so we just leave.
I have never seen so many motorcycles as I have out West, nor so many people with tattoos. Two women on a motorcycle wink at us. Are they winking at Bob, or at me?!
I see my first cheek-piercing today, too. OW!
Down the street at Bob's BBQ we are attracted by the smells, but the meal proves to be the worst we've had so far - hard pulled pork, stale and dry cornbread, tasteless coleslaw and the worst old and flat crumbly bun we've ever seen.
Bob is still looking for the perfect buttery yellow buckskin fringed jacket. He saw one years ago in Montana on our way back from Alaska, and passed it up because of the expense, but he's been kicking himself ever since.
Utah is the Beehive State, but we saw no beehives in two weeks of traveling across the entire state. Yet here we are in Nevada, and so far we have seen two farms with hundreds of beehives. We ask why and are told that the name "Beehive State" for Utah comes from the Mormon ethic of working "like busy little bees".
Our RV park has standards - only vehicles of certain brands and certain model years are admitted. Ours is one of the smallest and oldest. There is a really old RV here that appears to have a young working family living in it with 3 kids, ages about 2, 5 and 13. Maybe the Mom is a traveling nurse?
The 5 year old spends the entire hour while we are making dinner seeing how far she can throw her little plastic chair across the empty RV site next to theirs. She stomps after it, angry that she can't better her last effort, only to try again and again. A strong wind from an upcoming storm helps her cause.
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