Flashback Friday

We kicked off the first week of summer with a trip to the pool, lake Tahoe, shopping, sleeping in, and something that I have had on my list to do for the past year.  Virginia City hosts a free flashback Friday museum day once a month in the summer.  Last year we missed every single one because we always had something else going that day.  This year it landed the first week out of school for us.  Matt and Kelsey had to work so it was just me and the little kids.  There is a whole list of free museums to visit, and we got an early start to visit as many as we could.  Below:  V.C. Courthouse, Old Washoe Club, The way it was museum, St. Mary in the Mt's. Catholic museum, St Mary's (old hospital from the 1800's).

We started the day at the Storey County courthouse.  Besides being an old building there wasn't much to see/do.  I popped into the county assessors office and asked a nice lady there if there was anything to show the kids.  She told me there wasn't really much to see there, but offered to show us the vault in her office and showed us all the old record books that survived the fire in the 1800's.  She took some of the books down to show us the handwritten ledgers, which I thought was really cool.  The kids were less than impressed.  One of the next stops was to Piper's Opera House (said to be very haunted).  We got a tour of the old Opera house, and the kids even got to sit in one of the box seats right off the stage.  We weren't allowed to go onto the stage, because they were getting ready for a wedding there, but they invited us to come back for free another day.

One of my favorite's was the Mackay Mansion.  We had a great tour there and were told all about the Mackay's and their fame.  They had the first indoor plumbing, and also first telephone in the town.  Not sure who they called?

I think the kids favorite museum was the Historic fourth ward school.  There were lots of rooms to explore in here, and pretend like you were back in time going to school.  We found the dunce corner, with the hat!

We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out some of the old school puzzles, and math problems.  This one really had us stumped:

Let me know if you figure it out.  We visited a few of what they call the most haunted places in town.  I gotta say the old Washoe club they say is haunted....I may agree.  The have an old crypt in the very back that I did venture into by myself, it was pretty creepy!  Also at St. Mary's hospital we found out you can rent a room and stay overnight....no thank you.  There are so many crazy weird hidden staircases in that place.  After we had been completely spooked we stopped in for an ice-cream lunch and to visit Kelsey at work.

It was a great day to explore all the museums, and now we know which ones we would go back too, and which ones we will just agree probably have ghosts!