Conference on the Comstock

How cool is that? The Nevada SCBWI's (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Conference, which I'm attending, is in Virginia City this weekend. This legitimate old west town was the model for the fake old west town in the now-closed Ponderosa Ranch, a beautiful lake-front setting on the north shore of Lake Tahoe where some episodes of "Bonanza" were filmed. I loved visiting that place when it was an amusement park but now that it's closed, I can only see the town through my imagination. That's why it's in my current manuscript. As I take an hour to drive down one mountain and up another to Virginia City, I wonder what it must have been like with a horse-drawn carriage. The Starbuck's drive-thru would have been tricky.