Reno and More

Thursday morning: What a spectacular natural phenomenon: Rain and gray skies and, suddenly, a fabulous partial rainbow for just about 2 minutes.
Wednesday evening our fam tour had started with a site inspection and dinner at the Peppermill Resort & Casino - one of the large casino hotels in Reno. Though we personally are not really interested in site inspections, we have to admit, that the dinner buffet was fabulous, sorted by different cuisines and very nicely presented and prepared. Personally, I have a problem with buffets: don't need that many choices, because it takes me too long to figure out what I like best.

More site inspections in Reno on Thursday morning – not quite logical, since there are site inspections offered on Monday, too.... But, 11 1/2 out of 14 members of our group are tour ops/travel agents from Asia – China, Hongkong, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia. After breakfast buffet - sumptuous again - we had a tour in the Silver Legend/Eldorado/Circus Circus (the three hotels are connected to each other and have one owner).

We were happy when we finally got to the National Automobile Museum for some "cultural experience" for a change. This museum with cars from the Harrah Collection has a “Wow!” factor you don’t often find in a museum. More than 200 cars in pristine condition are to be seen in four galleries, nicely set up, with street scenes and special exhibitions. William F. Harrah (1911-1978) was an American businessman and the founder of Harrah's Hotel & Casinos and he was a big car collector. He donated a lot of his collection to this museum including everything from the first car from 1892 to electric cars and celebrity cars to one-of-a-kind cars - just amazing! Thinking about how uniform in design and colors cars nowadays are, the cars and brands in the past were highly individual, from the hood ornaments to form and colors. We had two very knowledgeable docents and learned a lot in this amazing museum.


On to another site inspection (the hotel most of the participants stay during the tourism conference anyway ...) and another exuberant lunch buffet in the Atlantis hotel, the leading casino resort hotel in town. Eventually, we left town, headed for Elko. Though, we've been told that the drive on Interstate Highway 80 through the desert of the Great Basin will be boring, to us this trip through ranchland was interesting - wide open land. Huge open pit gold mines are "hidden" apart from the Interstate - ranching and mining are the two main industries in the region. Also, we had interesting converation with our bus driver Ron, a Nevada local, ranging from fishing and hunting and Morgan horses to mining and ranching and rodeo and truck-driving. Glad, that we have suchan interesting person in the group!

Stopped in Lovelock/Nevada, where friends, family and lovers come to forever lock their love. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, Lovelock adopted the custom of symbolically locking one’s love on a never-ending chain. Now the town is the nation’s official love-locking destination. Sunset en route was beautiful with the mountains forming the background:

We arrived to Elko's Red Lion Hotel & Casino at about 7:30 pm. We were glad to be able stay in the same hotel for two nights! Dinner in the Aspens Bar & Grill was surprisingly delicious.

By the way, that's my next car: