David and my cousin, Terry, are business partners. They started a tradition where they have a retreat in January to look over their company goals for the upcoming year. This year, we had the retreat in the Tahoe area. We stayed at the Old Greenwood Villas again, an amazing property.
Dinner our first night was at a place called Burger Me! It’s been ranked as one of the Top 10 Burgers on ‘Diners, Drive In, and Dives’, with Guy Fieri, and won Best Burger -Esquire’s Best Food Moments of 2012. We all enjoyed our meals, although I suffered the rest of the night for eating too late before bedtime. We all agreed it was good, but I think places like this have a tough go of it because expectations are so high.
My cousin, T!
The boys loved the fluffy bathrobes the property provided…
We spent a full day in Virginia City. I had taken the boys here a few years ago, and wanted to show David and Terry. I was about 90 minutes from Truckee.
Downtown Virginia Ctiy…
A fun little shooting gallery…
The spiral staircase of the Washoe Club. An old property that once housed the ‘Millionaire’s Club’, a club limited to 200 members, and included Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Edison, and Mark Twain.
The Washoe Club is also popular for ghost hunters and has been on TV more than once.
We took a tour of a mine that I took the boys on a few years ago. We had the same guide, and we were (again), the only people on the tour. Midweek, midwinter….
The Delta Saloon. A gambling establishment that was full of cigarette smoke. We beelined to take a photo of the “Suicide Table”, then headed back out.
- “So called because three previous Owners are reported to have committed Suicide because of heavy Losses over this Table. Originally a Faro Bank Table brought to Virginia City in the early 1860’s. The Owner, supposed to be one “Black Jake”, Lost $70,000 in one Evening and shot himself.”
- The second owner, whose name is lost in history, ran the Table for one nights play. He was unable to pay off his losses. One report has it that he committed suicide and another report has it that he was saved the trouble.
- The table was then stored for some years because no one would Deal on it. It was finally converted into a ’21’ Table sometime in the late ’90s’ and its black reputation seemed to have been forgotten, until one stormy night.
- A miner, who had been cleaned out in some other gambling house stumbled in half drunk. As the story goes, he gambled a gold ring against a five dollar gold piece, and won. He played all night Long… and by morning had one over $86,000 in cash, a team of horses and an interest in a gold mine. Everything the owner of table had in the world. That caused the third suicide.
- Many famous men have gambled for high stakes, leaning on the green cloth, watching the turn of a card. Fortunes have been won and lost on it.”
Our Wednesday was spent playing card games, video games, and reading. It was raining hard, and after a terrific dinner at Mikuni Sushi at North Star, we went to bed listening to rain pet the windows. What a wonderful surprise to wake up to this!!
