We played for a few
hours in Virginia City. After driving up and up and up and up along
the narrow winding road into the town, I happily parked the car on a
rutted gravel lot. "Park at your own risk!" said the sign. The bottom
of the car scrapped the ground as I found an empty spot. I put up the
old cardboard windshield shade as my friend climbed out. A man came
up to her to point out we had fluid pouring out the car! I hurried
back to see.......and some sort of fluid was rushing out from under
the car like Niagara Falls. I looked back at the rut where I scraped
and saw a rubber plug.....I gingerly knelt on the gravel and dirt lot
and tried to replug the hole in the back of the car, but it continued
to rush out as if it couldn't wait to moisten the parched land. It
was a strange fluid...I smelled it......not gasoline. There was no
green color from the radiator. It wasn't oily nor pinkish. Besides,
it was in the rear of the car. How many different fluids could there
be in a car? It just smelled like warm water.
We didn't take any chances and drove to the only gas station in
town. The two women behind the counter were searching through a trash
can and begrudgingly looked up at me with very cranky faces. One
woman finally asked me what I wanted. I told them I needed someone to
check the fluid thingy. They pointed me back outside and said someone
would come help me as soon as he finished parking a car and then
turned back to the trash search. We waited around in the heat for a
few.....no humans around.....waited a few more.....we finally saw
someone messing with a car near the garage and approached him. I
said, "We are waiting for a human to help us and you are the only
human around, so you get to be our human." He grunted and never
looked up. I took that as a sign of encouragement and walked back to
my car, still holding the rubber plug thingy.
He eventually came over, got on his knees and looked under the car
and asked if we had a cooler. I thought at first he wanted a Diet
Pepsi.....but I always knew dating that guy who spoke with brief
words and grunts would come in handy because this maybe-a-mechanic
guy said in cryptic grunting speech that this was a plug to rid the
trunk of excess fluid.....captured fluid in the spare tire area. I
then remembered once a whole bunch of water spilled in the trunk
about a year earlier and this must be the leftover :) I always
wondered where it went. I thought it simply dried up :) And now I
know there is a plug under the spare tire area! You can't get an
education like this just anywhere! We thanked him for the
information. He grunted a reply and returned his head in the engine
of his car.
We drove back to the parking area and recaptured our old
spot.....we had, afterall, marked our territory; no one else had
taken that spot. And then we played old west. I shimmied up to the
bar and chatted with the bartender. I played the nickel slots. We
took a little tour through the town and heard all the local history.
Best $3 we spent. Did you know that Comstock really didn't own any
land in Nevada when the gold rush hit, but told everyone he owned the
largest mines; thus, the rush was named after him? Did you know they
had no idea that the blueish mineral in the earth was worth anything
and even lined the streets with it.....until someone told them it was
silver? We went through a few museums -- the best being the Red Light
District museum -- and continued to walk along the wood sidewalks,
looking in windows and talking to strangers.
We left Virginia City out the back way, drove through Carson City
and headed out to Lake Tahoe. We stopped along the way to gaze at the
gorgeous scenery and to ohh and aww at the lake. We waved good bye to
Nevada and hello to California, reaching our next night's destination
of Placerville -- we were now in
California Gold
Country
On to Day Three
