Day one of our fall road trip, we camped just south of Reno at Davis Creek Regional Park. This is a pretty forested area on the edge of the Washoe Valley.

There’s a pretty pond.

I hadn’t planned on doing any geocaching, but I was hiking a short loop trail and two guys came by. One was staring at his phone saying, “Sixty feet, fifty feet…” so I followed them to the cache. Took nothing, left a Bahamian dime.

Just south of that park is another one, Bowers Mansion. It has what passes for a stately home in this part of the world, built out of mining profits, and when the mine went bust, converted to a guest house and restort. It’s been a place where you could go to swim and picnic for over a hundred and fifty years now.

The matriarch of the house Eilley Bowers had it built at great expense when she and her third husband struck it rich with a silver mine, and then ran it as a guest house when they went broke. Eventually that business failed as well, and she moved to San Francisco and worked as a fortune teller. The house and grounds became a county park in mid 20th century and inside of the house was restored to its Victorian splendor with the help of furniture donated by hundreds of local families. Luckily this was a time when Victorian furniture was unfashionable, so people were happy to unload grandma’s old furniture for a tax deduction.


In a few cases the furniture donated back were pieces that Ellie and her husband had originally purchased for the house.