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Thursday, June 16- We were still in Minden at Leslie's and Tim's house. We had a very busy and exciting day! First, we visited Tim where he works. He is the Dep Dir where he works, but (I am sorry, Tim) I don't remember the agency. What he does is writes all of the rules, books, training manuals, etc for the all of the police depts in NV. At the facility he works at, they, also, train all of the police officers except the ones in Las Vegas. What is completely fascinating about where he works is it used to be a school for Native Americans from 1870 to 1980. For 30 years, the US would basically kidnap the Native American children and bring them to this facility to educate them in English, Christianity, and the "American Way". After those 30 years, it became voluntary if the students came to school there and was more a vocational school. We toured the facility and it was absolutely fascinating.
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| Tim's office, which used to be a dorm room. |
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| Another part of his office, which was a closet for the dorm room. |
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| Part of the campus. |
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| More of the campus. |
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| You can do a walking cell phone tour of the facility. They have these plaques in front of many of many of the buildings; you call a # on the plaque and it gives you info on that building. |
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| Map of the facility. Gives you an idea of how big the campus is. |
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| They are currently trying to put together a museum for the school. It is still in the construction phase. |
| We then went to Virginia City, which again, very interesting. |
Virginia City, in its prime, was the home for some major silver and gold mines. I guess it is referenced in the TV show Bonanza. I have never seen Bonanza, but for those of you who have should get it.
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| A big mansion that I just thought was very pretty. |
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| The first Catholic church in NV. Very pretty. |
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| I don't think you get the idea how steep this hill is but we hiked up it at one point. Also, Virginia City is at 8000 feet so I was really feeling the lack of oxygen when we did this. |
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| Part of the shopping area in Virginia City. |
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| Emily and Benjamin. :) |
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| Horse drawn carriage. |
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| "Old time miner with a mule". |
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| "Oh no! We were put in jail!" |
After shopping and lunch, we took a train ride. The conductor was extremely informative on the history of Virginia City.
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| One of the mines. There were others that are now closed. |
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| A mine. |
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| I think a bridge of that time that is now falling down but I don't 100% remember. |
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| The other trains, including a steam engine that was not working. |
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| This was 'Gold Hill' where 2 men found a wall of gold. |
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| Aunt Leslie and Benjamin. |
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| The conductor. |
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| The fam in front of the engine that drove our train. |
Ok, here is the EXCITING part! I left a bag from our shopping adventure on the train. I didn't realize it until we huffed up that huge steep hill and we had to get it before the train left again for another tour. We got to the car and Leslie drove me down to the train, I jumped out of the car while it was still moving! Ran to the train, got on the train, retrieved the package but then the train left the station! So I had to jump off a MOVING train! Very exciting I have to say but I will probably never do that again.
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| Benjamin with a lollypop purchased in Virginia City. |
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| Emily with her lollypop. |
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| Leslie and Tim are excellent cooks! I don't think I mentioned all of the wonderful food they made us throughout the week. Thursday night, they made beer can chicken which was really amazing! I am going to have to try it when we get home! |
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| Benjamin and his pop gun that he got. |
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| Being a real cowboy with his popgun! |
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| Uncle Tim giving Benjamin golf lessons. Benjamin loved it! One of his favorite parts of the trip! |
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| Benjamin sitting in front of the fire. |
On Friday, June 17, J. returned to his family! We were all very excited! That day we went up to Lake Tahoe which is about 20 min from Minden.
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| On the way up to Lake Tahoe. |
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| Getting further up. |
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| The next 2 pictures are not very good but they show how close we were to SNOW. SNOW in June is just crazy! |
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| Picture of the whole family but children not cooperating. :( |
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| Lake Tahoe. |
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| Better picture of the family. |
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| Aunt Leslie, Me, the kids and Uncle Tim. |
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| On the way down the mountain home. |
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| Another picture of snow capped mountains. |
Later that night, they took us to eat Basque food for the first time. Basque food is from a valley in France and Spain. They have 7 courses, it was great food. Also, they have a special drink called a 'pecan' which I was not in love with but J. seemed to like it. :) We went home and had an early bed time so we could get up early on Saturday and start our long drive home....
