In which Moominmama learns how much climate (and culture) can differ on one side of a mountain versus the other...

Driving into Carson City on the western edge of Nevada, the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains are a stunning sight after miles of desert.

Moominmama had only just settled in when she realized it was a short drive up and over the western hills to get to Lake Tahoe, the second deepest lake (after Crater Lake in Oregon) in the U.S. After hiking along part of the Rubicon trail on the southern rim of the lake, the brilliant colors compelled me to break out my folding kayak.

I wanted to be closer to the glittering turquoise near the beaches and the saturated aquamarine further out. The photo at the top was taken from my kayak pointed at the beach. And this photo was taken from the Rubicon trail that runs high along the rocky cliffs. It still doesn't capture the colors!

I'd gone from sagebrush to piney woods. I'd gone from the wild west to the wild wealth in Tahoe. And I'd found much to my annoyance that I still sweat! 

No matter how difficult the hike, when I was in the southwest, the dry air evaporated and cooled me as I exerted myself! I did miss that, but a short swim in that ice cold water helped clean me up. (55.2 degrees for those of you who care!)

I also found some unusual flowers on the Tahoe side of the Nevada-California divide. 

Anyone know what this flower could be? They come up from the dirt as little rose-colored balls then open up like this. I am sure there will many more new discoveries on the west side of the Sierra Nevadas! 

But I will miss the wonderful fragrance of sagebrush and pinon pine after I cross the mountains and get to Yosemite.

Before my departure, I did make a final excursion in Nevada to Virginia City, a boomtown made famous by the discovery of gold and ultimately by a motherlode of silver. And while it's no longer a mining town but a tourist destination, there was still a lot to learn. 

Take this for example, below. It was used in the mines -- what do you think for? This was the question posed to me by my guide at the Chollar Mine, the only remaining tourist attraction that actually brings you partway into one of the original mines. 

While there are miles and miles of tunnels under Virginia City, which is built into a hillside, much of the mines, at least the entrances, were filled in before the U.S. entered World War II. Couldn't have the Nazis getting at that silver!

So I looked at this contraption with its two metal lids on top of the big metal container that had an outlet at the bottom, thinking maybe you filled it with wood, heated it to hot coals and fried up food for the miners? Um, no.

It was a rolling two-seat toilet. Miners stayed underground for hours and couldn't very well leave poop in the tunnels! So this was the solution. Roll this down during the work day and roll it back up when it was full.

It's hard to imagine why men would take on such jobs, ones that endangered their lives of and mostly enriched those who had the capital to buy the claims. 

But the miners were paid very well for their time: $4 a day as opposed to the typical daily wage of 70 cents. My guide said the miners in Virginia City had a strong union that ensured them good wages. But the miners also got used to the idea that life was short. Many died young from the silica they breathed from the excavations; others from tunnel fires, collapses. 

At the end of the workday, on the streets of Virginia City, they spent their money at the fancy Opera House or in the many saloons. Or gambling.

There's still a "don't tell me what to do with my life!" pride in Nevada. And there is still mining in Nevada. Not gold and silver, but lithium. 

The Comstock lode, the silver that was mined here, helped fund the Union side of the Civil War. But it also ultimately crashed the market for silver -- that's how much silver it produced. Silver remains here in the ground, but I'm told it's not worth the cost to get the rest of it! There's still a scrappy, devil-take-it atmosphere here along the wooden plank sidewalks and tiny shops hawking everything from crystals to cigars. Most operate on cash only. Some stores and saloons are locked or boarded up, but others are hoping for that post-pandemic tourism boom.

I have come to appreciate, if not Nevada exactly, the dry clarity of its desert, its stubborn tenacity. And I appreciate that Virginia City is not a tourist town the way South Tahoe is! This is not a community of the rich, but of those who still hope to make it rich.

So after weeks in the desert, whether that's New Mexico or Utah or Nevada, I now cross the Sierra Nevada mountains to spend the next section of my journey in Yosemite and then up the Pacific coast. But I have a fond glimpse of the valley, taken during a hike in King's Canyon looking out toward Carson City, the desert landscape that's enriched me in spirit, and that I am about the leave behind.