Kathryn's Hols- Day 4 (Evening) - The Bucket of Blood

On the way back from Wildcat cabin we decided to go back to Virginia City for another look around. Mark Twain worked there for a while on the local newspaper of this goldrush town and there is a museum in his honor there. Although it had loads of interesting stuff there, nothing much was labelled and very little attempt was made at telling a story, quite disappointing.

We went for a beer at the famous Bucket of Blood saloon. Quite an odd place. Clearly a very historic building but now extremely touristy, though some strange cowboy touristy types. And in common with everywhere, this vintage saloon was crammed full of slot machines.

We took a look at The Suicide Table a famously cursed gambling table where a number of unfortunates gave up on life after their extreme losses. It would be easy to imagine the same fate befalling some of the people we saw in The Atlantis in Reno too, some very desperate people wandering amind the slot empire (Sushi there amaazing though!).

Virginia City is disappointing because it is a genuinely historic place and they could do so much more with it. I've been watching HBO's Deadwood series which conveys some impression of what places like Virginia City would've been like (although the real Deadwood was entirely lawless). Being in Virginia City completes the picture a bit.

It's not exactly high season in this gold rush town so we struggled to find somewhere to eat. We ended up in the Gold Hill Hotel (1859). We figured that if we stayed for the historical lecture that night we could eat more cheaply and might learn something. Well, the food was good but the lecture by Calamity Jan was dreadful. It was posted as the story of Wild Ghost Horses (we have wild horses around here) but it was really just the author's life story. We escaped at half-time. Kathryn claims to have liked the talk but I think she was just be contrary, or perhaps it was interesting from a human perspective or something.