Coleman CA to Minden NV

Today we traveled from Coleman, CA to Minden, NV to finish the last four park inspections at Lake Tahoe.  Minden is situated on US-395 and by staying in a park here, it is a nice alternative to taking the coach over the mountain range between this park and Lake Tahoe on a serpentine highway that climbs up and down large grades.

On the drive up we passed an area hard hit by forest fire and we worry about the huge fire burning in our beloved Washington.  With that as our destination over the upcoming week, we are hoping the firefighters will have luck with putting it out.  I hate to think of 400 square miles in Washington looking like this.

We also saw an interesting sight en route.  A cypress tree I believe died and whoever owns has let it stand near a barn.  From a distance, neither of us could tell what it was.  As we got closer, we understood what it was.  It is funny how your mind tries to make sense of the unknown.  We both had come up with alternatives that proved to be untrue when the mystery was solved.  I wonder if they put Christmas lights on it?

Minden has a historic downtown and twelve miles to the north is a large mall with all of the usual stores.  When we arrived after getting the coach settled in for the next four nights we drove around in historic Minden.  They have a farmer’s market on Tuesday nights next to a town square with a band stand gazebo and we saw the vendors setting up tables and preparing their displays of the usual fresh vegetables, some jewelry and yummy looking fresh bread.  We resisted because our encounter with them was before the official opening of 4 pm.

There are some quaint houses in historic Minden, one of which is called the A. F. Neidt House.  It has a plaque that dates the home’s construction back to 1909.  Originally A. F. Neidt, a cement contractor (who also poured most of the town’s concrete sidewalks during this time) built the house.  Later a woman named Annie Hickey Raycraft who rented out rooms to “unmarried lady” schoolteachers owned the home.

Many of the town’s buildings are built of brick.  There seems to be an effort to restore the interior of many of these buildings with lots of evidence of construction going on.  The surrounding neighborhood is inviting.  I could easily live in one of the homes along tree-lined streets with grassy front yards like ones I remember as a child.

We’ll stay here until Saturday morning.  Luckily there is WiFi although it is slow at times.  It feels good to be almost caught up again on telling our story.  Thanks for waiting for us to find a connection again!