Almost forgot, but we had a Reno staycation at the Atlantis Casino a few weeks ago! Very fun trip—hubs and I had a babysitter come stay with the girls while we attended the big crab feed. Great event: king crab legs, lobster bisque, various types of shrimp and a lot of different desserts; I practically had to roll back to the room.
BUT one of the exciting things was that in the guestroom there was a copy of Where Reno-Tahoe! My old boss at TQ, Chaco, now works for the company and had hired me to write an article about the film history of the Reno-Tahoe area. It was a fun story to write—researching the stories behind old movies (like The Gold Rush, which supposedly hired a bunch of Sacramento vagrants to struggle up a snowy Donner Pass, which was standing in for Alaska) to rewatching Sister Act while looking for Reno cameos.
Anyway, fun to see it in print! I wrote another article recently for Where San Francisco that I need to check up on. It was about Mark Twain’s time in Tahoe and was really fun to research; I took a trip to Virginia City and read Roughin’ It. Twain really is quite quotable and his words stick with you—I was at an Incline Village beach on Saturday and was telling a friend about the “balloon voyages” he took, which meant lying on a boat and simply looking down at the water and, because of its clarity, imagine he was floating in the sky. What a perfect description, right? And a good reminder to continue working on my descriptive writing!
Here is the link to the article: 18 Must-See Films Shot in Reno-Tahoe
Alison O. Bender 