Virginia City, NV - Blog (Patreon)

Our intentions of staying here in Virginia City were approximately zero upon planning our Haunted Nevada road trip. We’d decided to start in Reno, make our way to Carson and Genoa (I wanted to visit a restaurant in a pink house in Genoa 🩷), spend 1-2 days in Tonopah, then head home. I am so freaking glad we stumbled upon this adorable town. Someone must have suggested we check it out, otherwise we’d have gone right by.

As we drove in from Reno in the afternoon, there was some light rain, but nothing too heavy. Thank goodness because we hadn’t upgraded our little sedan rental and going up those hills in rain had me a wee bit nervous as it was. We found a really cute B&B and were excited to book it. We got no answer when we called and continued to get the runaround for quite a while as there had been a big dirt bike event in town that weekend, and all local business owners were tied up with it somehow. Every hotel was booked until that evening and the B&B we wanted ended up a no go.

We came across the Tahoe House hotel finally, after my picky little butt kept looking for something adorable, and it was... HEAVEN. We booked a room immediately! I won't go too into detail here because the Tahoe House will be getting its own blog post (it is THAT good). The owner, Paul, checked us in and gave us a quick run-down of the town. After unloading, we walked around town. Many shops were closed, as is the way with small town life, but we still really enjoyed it.

For dinner, we decided to check out one of the restaurants Paul suggested, The Cider Factory.

Can we talk about the fairytale cuteness of the entrance?! The pictures and videos don't do it justice! I felt like I was in a storybook as we walked in up the path. It was quaint and cozy, completely unpresuming. Though it looks like a house turned restaurant, it was an actual cider factory back in the 1800s. It made my day that they didn't go too commercial with turning it into a restaurant- it felt like walking into an aunt's house.

I may or may not have made the mistake of eating a nibble of an edible prior to going (this is not something I do usually since I'm not a good socially high person, but we were on vacay and I wanted to enjoy the food extra!), which made for an extra hilarious pre-dinner conversation with the hubs. 😆

I can’t actually remember what we ordered and shockingly, I didn’t take photos aside from the chocolate bread pudding we were told to try. Holy heck-  it was outstanding! Aside from the donut bread pudding at Carson Kitchen in Vegas, I'd say this was the best I'd ever had.

After our early dinner, we went back to the hotel and wandered around a bit. Paul made me a drink and we talked with him for quite a while.

He gave us a lot of history about the town and surrounding areas. With a little buzz, and lots of gratitude for the happy belly and great conversation, we headed to our room to wind down for the night. As you can tell from the photos, this is an old building with a lot of character, and some major creepy vibes at times. It used to be a brothel, so it only makes sense as I’m sure some crazy stuff has happened on these grounds. I finally drifted off to sleep, and when I woke...WHAT A SURPRISE!

I can’t remember the exact amount of snowfall, but it was A TON for being unexpected and early in the year for them. We knew Tahoe was expecting a storm but didn’t think about how close we were to there and the fact that it could affect Virginia City also. This town is full of hills, so there was no way we were driving anywhere in that little sedan. In no form or fashion were we disappointed about this as we had quickly fallen in love with the old west saloon vibes here and were happy to stay another night at the Tahoe House.

For those of you who don’t know, JD keeps a night schedule, usually sleeping 9 am-4 or 5 pm, and I am an early riser who is lucky to make it till 6 am. Even when traveling and we try to get on a similar schedule, I’m always up first. Not wanting to wake him, I bundled up and grabbed our Sony to go for a morning walk. Sleepy, small, western town with FRESH snow?! What a photo opportunity! I didn’t have the most appropriate attire, but I made do. (I really just had to google if it was supposed to be “made due.” 😅) These are some of the photos I got:

(I actually got a better pic on my phone of the church because I had the wrong lens on the Sony)

Phone pic:

Once JD woke up, we walked around and found a little place for some breakfast and then we went back to the hotel to switch rooms. Lucky for us, they were doing maintenance in the main part of the hotel which meant we got The Carriage House (scroll to bottom of the booking page to see it) we originally wanted! It had been booked just before we called the previous night.

We hung out and talked more with Paul and he was extremely generous with giving us full access to the hotel to photograph all the rooms while they were open. I inquired about having events there and he was totally open to the idea, not even batting a lash when I asked if they were okay with photos being on the sexy side. He explained that since it used to be a brothel, it actually seemed quite appropriate, which made my little heart light up!

It was still early in the afternoon, so we went back to the cottage and JD took this set of photos that you’ve likely seen here by now:

It felt lovely to have so much forced down time since we couldn’t drive anywhere, so we just hung out. The snow did end up melting enough to drive by late afternoon, so once we got hungry, we drove a few minutes to have dinner at Crown Point at the Gold Hill Hotel, another suggestion from Paul.

Like Virginia City, Gold Hill was an old mining town and the stories Paul shared of miners falling down some of these wildly deep mines were unnerving. Thinking about how hard and unsafe times were back then and the risks people were willing to take really outs things into perspective. JD ordered the shrimp scampi and I got a burger. Both were delish!

After dinner, we made our way back to the cottage and enjoyed our last little bit in Virginia City.

As sad as I was to leave the following morning, I was grateful to have more time than planned in this precious town. There was a lot of stuff we wanted to do but couldn’t because of the weather, so I imagine we will revisit! (hopefully with my pops as I know he will love it!)

Throughout the year they have all sorts of events from motorcycle and car shows to saloon crawls to concerts, and even some more bizarre things like their camel and ostrich races!

Have you been to Virginia City?

Would you go?

Virginia City website: https://visitvirginiacitynv.com