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Wanderung 13

Any Which Way But Loose:

Meandering Many Miles in Multitudinous Mechanisms

September 2006

Monday, September 25th - Volksmarch in Carson City, Nevada.

Our main objective for the day was to walk the Carson City Volksmarch. After an early and quite meager breakfast at our Super 8 Motel (juice, English muffin, sweet roll), we drove over to the starting point to fill out the forms and pick up the map and directions for our walk. The Carson City walk essentially began with a big loop out into the countryside to the west of town. The route traversed some new suburbs and on the edge of town we saw what could only be described as mansions.


 

After passing some real farmland (probably old cattle pastures) complete with an old barn, we continued to loop back around to return to the main business district. The neighborhoods on this area of the walk had more average, middle-class houses and schools, but as we neared the center of town we saw some beautifully restored Victorian houses. I always enjoy seeing the colorful paint schemes that the owner's contrive to arrange on the fancy woodwork and siding of the Victorians. Sometimes I like the final effect and sometimes I don't, but it's always interesting.

Rejoining Carson Street we had lunch at a really nice bakery one block south of our route. I can't remember the name, but the bakery had dark green awnings over all the windows and served homemade soups and freshly made sandwiches which were delicious. The rest and meal gave us enough energy to continue to the Nevada State Legislature building. That turned out to be a modern, functional, rather soulless building with the traditional arrangement of the state Senate on one end and the state Assembly on the other side.

The park next to the state legislature was bordered on the east by the Nevada Supreme Court, a very pretty building that was the checkpoint for our walk. The park also featured a couple of statues including one of the man who had laid out the design for Carson City. With remarkable foresight he also set aside several acres for the state capital.


 

On the north side of the park, the old state capitol building was still standing, and it was a really beautiful late 1800s stone block edifice, looking somewhat like a big old cathedral. I couldn't resist going inside for a look-see, and the guard at the information desk welcomed us and invited us to look around and take pictures as much as we wanted. There was no screening or metal detectors or anything like that, which we found a very pleasant change in this security conscious age.


 

The old Senate and Assembly rooms are apparently being restored to their original appearance slowly as finances permit. The Assembly room was currently empty of furniture and just used for special events, but even bare of furniture the old room looked grand to me. The Assembly room had extraordinarily high ceilings with an array of hidden fluorescent lights to provide lighting, and the net effect was a very spacious and airy elegance.

The old Senate chambers had been converted to a small museum, and we wandered around that for a while, reading all about the exhibits. We enjoyed looking at the old desks of the Senators; they looked like nothing so much as the wooden desks you see in the old one-room schoolhouses, just super-sized. Apparently you can donate money to restore a particular desk. I presume that once they are all restored the Senate chambers might be arranged as they looked in the late 1800s.

The old Supreme Court room in the center of the building looked like it had already been restored. The beautiful wood furnishings there looked intact and they had all been lovingly and painstakingly polished. I could easily imagine the extensive legal proceedings that had taken place there over the decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We were all getting a bit tired by this point, possibly due to the 5,000 foot altitude as well as the previous day's walk, so we reluctantly left the old legislature building and zigzagged our way west to see the Governor's Mansion.

We found the Governor's Mansion at 600 Mountain Street, and it was a very pretty white mansion with an extensive verandah. It looked very livable and again I saw no threatening signs or other obvious evidence of security on the mansion grounds. But the entire area around the Governor's Mansion was filled with beautiful older mansions, probably built during the boom years of Carson City, and we enjoyed seeing those as well.

Returning to the center of town, we completed our Volksmarch back at the gas station and climbed wearily back into the car. At least part of our fatigue was definitely due to the fact that we are sea level folks and this walk has a 5,000 foot plus mean altitude. Still, we enjoyed the walk a lot and rewarded ourselves afterwards with a visit to Carson City's sole Dairy Queen, after which we returned to the motel so that I could take yet another afternoon nap.

Understandably, we didn't feel like walking any more that day so we spent the late afternoon by driving up north to Reno, Nevada. In part, Chris wanted to check out the route from Carson City to the airport in Reno, and in part we all wanted to see what kind of town Reno was. As far as I could tell from looking at the buildings, Reno is built on mainly on its gambling casinos and secondarily on the banking industry. After our brief visit we all agreed that Carson City seemed a much more pleasant and livable town than Reno, in part because it is much smaller and has fewer and smaller casinos. We had a quick dinner on our way back from Reno and settled back in our motel for the last night of our trip.

Copyright 2006 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
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September 2006
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