Today is Day 7 of what is a stellar trip for us! I took 95 photos today while we toured Yosemite - unbelievable beauty that had our heads spinning. However, I will have to edit those photos before contemplating a blog post here!
This post is about our trip back over Donner and onto Highway 395 to Dayton, Nevada where we stayed Friday and Saturday nights. Why Dayton? It had a nice RV park and was close to Virginia City that we wanted to visit to say we'd been there . . . Dayton, sadly, is not terribly interesting except perhaps from an historical viewpoint. That is, it is the site of Nevada's first gold discovery in 1849 which, I suppose, is memorable in that it is smack dab in the middle of silver mining country. With that tidbit of information, here is the way things went Friday (in photos and a few words):
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| Railroad bridge over I-80 East at Colfax |
We had left Dad and You Bet Road around 7:00 a.m. which put us driving into the sunrise over the Sierras. The views over the Pass were gorgeous, especially at the Donner Summit view point.
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| I posted this on Instagram and made it my cover photo on Facebook - seen with my own eyes! |
We hadn't had breakfast before we left Dad's, so because we were so impressed with the two meals we'd had at Mel's Diner Boomtown, we pulled in there for an encore.
From there, it didn't take long to get to the turnoff for Virginia City and we didn't know that we were in for a very intense journey over Geiger Grade, a "short cut." We could've stayed on Highway 395 to Carson City and turned onto Highway 50 to Dayton, but it looked like an opportunity for something different and indeed it was! This is Nevada Highway 341, often called the Virginia City Highway and dates back to the 1860's, providing the most direct route from the Comstock Lode to Reno. Here are a few photos taken on the way up to the summit:
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| See that winding road? Steep too! |
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| Oh my! |
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| Compared to what elevations we experienced today over Tioga Pass, this is not that high; however, for the Nevada desert, it was an incredibly ear-popping height. |
Day 5 was spent visiting Virginia City (Gold Hill and Silver City on the way and back) and, I believe, deserves a blog post all its own. As a teaser, here are a couple photos of that wild West town:
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| View of the West side of C Street, Virginia City (lots of tourists) |
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| Bernadette, the donkey. This has a story for another day! |
Our plan is to pull out of Lee Vining (where we are staying again tonight at the
Mono Vista RV Park) and traveling back home to Utah on
Highway 50 (the Loneliest Highway in America), stopping one last night on the Nevada desert, probably Winnemucca.
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