Prospecting for gold on the Autoweek America Adventure

Halloween isn't just for kids, at least not in Nevada casinos. There are ghouls and ghosts are virtually everywhere, and many people are dressed in costume, too.

On Monday morning at the Autoweek America Adventure briefing, we were told that this will be the longest driving run. Do it right, and it will take eight hours and 15 minutes to complete the missions and make our next layover: Death Valley. How appropriate for Halloween, huh? More pointed is the theme for today's clues--ghosts and ghost towns, of which there are plenty in Nevada.

Whatever we do, we are forewarned by the stern and lovely Natalie, who has orchestrated this band of motorized adventurers, to be sure to obey speed limits. These are small towns and there's one way to make money the old fashioned way--take it from passersby in the form of speeding tickets. We are forewarned and forearmed.

Now, having spent some of my high school years here in Reno--yes, people actually live in the Biggest Little City in the World, and I graduated a Reno High Husky--it was good to see the town again. I say "town" but it is, as all cities of our youth are, as we remember. Reno has grown and sprawled and only a shadow of its former self lies behind the houses that now creep along the hills or the convention center that morphed into a massive structure. Reno has grown, that's for sure. Highways and ring roads try to hold in the progress that just doesn't stop. A "nice, quaint coffee shop" is now a casino that covers an entire city block, and I wonder whether I can still get the same great French toast it served 35 years ago.

That will have to be answered on another trip. Today we head to Virginia City, a ghost town in the hills that lie south and east of Reno. Virginia City is packed with lore of riches earned through prospecting and lost at the card tables in one lousy hand. Its d

By Dutch Mandel