The Virginia and Truckee Railroad has been running great all summer. Ever since opening weekend on Memorial Day they've been selling out most of the trains, at least the round-trip trains from Carson to Virginia and back. The one-way trips are still not selling very well, but those trips are necessary deadheads that get the train from the enginehouse to the depot, and any money they make on them is gravy. Probably gravy they had been counting on when they made their budgets, but if they ever end up building shop facilities at the Carson City end of the tracks the need for those one-way trips will go away.

Anyway, with sales so strong, they decided to extend the running season for the V&T this year. Originally the last train was supposed to run on Nevada Day weekend, at the end of October. But they've just announced that they're adding six extra weekends, more trains to provide extra capacity so more people can ride (and so they can bring in more money).

They've also added a new trip to their options, an additional run that leaves after the train gets back from Virginia City on Saturday. It's called "Colors In The Canyon", and it heads the other direction from Eastgate Depot. It uses the new tracks the run down into the Carson River Canyon, and provides a 45 minute trip to the river and back, showing the fall colors along the way. Although I've been along that route, and there's not a lot of trees to speak of. But maybe we can watch the sagebrush turn from green to a duller green.

Joking aside, this seems like a good option for them to add a trip into the canyon. The price is a lot lower than any of their other options too, at $15. Although that's still more than the Virginia City to Gold Hill run, which at $10 is the best deal around, as well as the most scenic. This trip through the canyon is supposed to be scenic too, but the truth is that over half of this trip is time you spend just getting down into the canyon. From what I understand, the track ends almost as soon as you catch sight of the river. This might be a more viable option when the tracks are finished all the way through the entire canyon, but right now it seems a little overpriced for what you get.

So I'm glad to see that the V&T is doing well enough to add these runs, and that they're still selling out a lot of their weekend trips. This is the second year of the experiment, to find out how much demand there really is for these train trips. It's heartening to know that we haven't run out of people willing to pay $48 a head yet. It would be interesting to find out how many second-time riders there are on these trains, or if the line of people who want to ride it once because they're curious just hasn't run out yet.

All summer Hwy 395 has been a work zone between Carson City and the Carson Valley, as NDOT adds a third lane to the highway on the southbound side. The construction zone goes from Jacks Valley Road down to Clear Creek Road, and they've been working for weeks on the shoulder, grading and paving a new roadbed. I guess that part of the project is over, because they've taken down the construction walls and we now have asphalt, new curbs, and guard rails all in place.

I don't think they're quite done yet, they're probably going to put a new layer of pavement on the two lanes that were already there, or at least do something to smooth out the rumble strip between the old lanes and the new. But this is a good sign that the hard part is over, and the project is winding down now.

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Last year the Spirit Halloween store was in the old Carpet Barn. This year that's a little impossible, so they've moved to the old Gottschalk's building in the Carson Mall. It seems like it's altogether too early to be thinking about Halloween, but it guess it is just two months away. Next week stores will start putting up Christmas decorations, so let's get Halloween out of the way now, eh?

I love finding Carson City trip reports on the web, outsiders who visit our part of the world and proceed to tell their friends how cool/boring/weird we are. The latest one I found is from Little Music Boxes; they visited Reno, Pyramid Lake, VC, Carson, and Lake Tahoe. The whirlwind tour!

I didn't take any pictures inside the capitol building since I didn't know if it was allowed. We got to go inside the assembly room and we even walked right by the governor's office. There was a huge statue of Sarah Winnemucca and we signed the guestbook with "Please legalize gay marriage!" as the comment. The guy who signed above us signed that the state should ban gambling. Sadly, I don't know which request is more likely.

Carson Now has an article outlining some of the events going on this weekend, including the Carson City Jazz Fest, Genoa Old Time Music Festival, and the Bowers Mansion Bluegrass Festival. Also this weekend the steam train is running at the Nevada State Railroad Museum Saturday and Sunday.

Earlier this week, I was cruising through town when I saw smoke rising in the distance. Suddenly I noticed it wasn't as far away as I thought, it was actually coming from right in the middle of town. I took a detour and found a house fully engulfed in flames. The little yellow house at the corner of 7th and Curry, right across the street from the Ormsby House. The flames were in the backyard, and pretty well chewed through the barn and trailer they had back there, as well as the rear of the house.

Fire crews were already on the scene when I got there, and had things pretty well under control. The flames turned to smoke, and then were completely out. What was left was a charred mess, but luckily everyone got out okay, including the two residents of the house and the dog that was trapped in the trailer. 6-year-old Thor was stuck in the trailer as it burned around him, but the firefighters knocked down the flames and found him hiding inside.

This house is 93 years old, built in 1917. I can't imagine they'll try to repair it. With 25% fire damage, it's probably a complete loss.

Video from Nevada Appeal:

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