Just want you all to know I'm reading your replies and some of you have sent me some emails as well, but because I'm driving and hunting for ghosts, I'm not going to be able to reply too often. I hope you can put up with me for a couple of days of hit and miss reporting.

All in all, day 1 was a great day, but had a bad start. I didn't mention it earlier, but the reason for the trip is that I'm taking my sister's car and her dog to Colorado where she's moving. My neighbor, Jim, heard she had a 2nd car that needed to be transported and volunteered to go on the trip with me (awesome!). We take off at 9am. First stop was to gas up at Costco. I get out, see a locking gas cap, but there's no gas cap key. Ugh. Sister says she'll just transport it. I find a solution on youtube. Costs a trip back to the house and we lose an hour, but eventually we get on our way.

1st Stop was Silver Springs, NV (about an hour from my home in Reno) to look for the Red Coach Casino. TCR address says "Hwys. 50 & 95". There are 2 casinos at that intersection today (slots only). Pulled into closest one (Silver Strike - Nugget's the other). Walked in and asked some employees if they knew where the Red Coach used to be. One gal starts to tell me about a casino she likes in Carson City (huh?). I RE-EXPLAINED that I'm looking for where the RED COACH USED TO BE. Another 2 say they've only been in the area for a year or two. Finally, someone with brains points me to a lovely woman near the cage who's lived in the area "for a long while" and she says "you're standing in it". Yay, first strike, first hit! She said after it was the Red Coach, it was Piper's and now it's the Silver Strike. Address update: 1190 US-50, Silver Springs, NV 89429

Next stop(s) Fallon. Made a couple of mistakes that cost some time (live and learn). A handful of casinos were on Hwy 50 (aka Williams Av) and the rest on S. Maine St. So, I passed the location for Mom's Place (oops!), hit Stockman's, doubled back to hit Mom's (now a Chevron/O'Reilly's with a large parking lot), went to Bonanza Inn and Depot, realized that Roadside Inn was at the same location as Mom's so doubled back AGAIN, but took pics from a different angle just to avoid the same-old same-old. That took care of Williams Av, so on to Maine St. where we walked along 2 blocks to hit 14 casinos!! First up is not a casino, per se. It's the Fallon Nugget's PARKING LOT, which used to house 4 different casinos with different addresses (Esquire Club, Frankie's, Owl Club, and Palace Club). What a tight squeeze. The Nugget itself used to be the Star Club. Continuing south, on the west side of the street we have Eddie's Club (the only Fallon casino that I do not have a chip from), Sagebrush Club, Bird Farm, Headquarters B&C, Barney's Bank Club, Keystone Club, Jerry's Pastime Club, and the Corner Bar (now a corner lot). Across the street lived the Nevada Club (the only casino on that side of the street - to keep riff-raff on one side only?). We had to hop back in the car to get to Club Horseshoe, which is now an actual ROAD (not an empty lot). Adjacent to that is the county museum, which seemed like a good place to inquire about Lucky Spot, the only casino I didn't have an address for. The staff there didn't know where it was, but diligently started searching the museum archives and googling. They didn't find any info on it at all, but they did hand me a folder full of casino-related articles covering openings, closings, transfers, employees of the month, etc, which had to be viewed in a special room with a camera watching your every move. The museum itself is amazing and I highly recommend you check it out if you pass through. Old guns, tack, quilts, leather bound JAIL RECORDS(!!), rocks & gems, a case of casino memorabilia (wooden nickels but no tokens), and loads of old large format photos mounted on swiveling panels (think old poster stores). They gave me an email address to send inquiries to, which they then share with other museum junkies, so I might find Lucky Spot still, but not today. I stuffed a $20 in the donation box. Well worth it.

Onward to Austin, Nevada. Only 2 casinos there to hunt down, but no address for either one in TCR. Golden Club was easy to spot. Empty, but has a new sign. There's a beautiful wood bar sitting inside. We had parked across the street in front of a local bar, and while I was finishing up some notes, an old-timer pulls up to grab a beer. I ask him if he lived here for a long time and if so, did he know where the Frontier Tavern is. He said yep, down the road past 2 rises and just before Road 376. I take this to mean maybe a 1/2mi. Turns out to be more like 10. He said, correctly, that we wouldn't see it as it had burned down a long time ago (for the insurance, he said authoritatively). He shared some other info and he kind of shook his head at the idea that someone would collect chips (smart man). We found the spot he was talking about (what a great view from the switchback roads above the town). Occupying the space is a mobile home and a lot of junk. I took a deep breath and walked down the driveway and knocked on the door. No one answered. There were cameras all over the place and I could see signs of generic hoarding through the glass outside door. I probably should have left my name/number, but opted not to. I took some pics with my FT chip and we headed for Ely.

But wait! Plot twist! I had totally missed the fact that Eureka was the next town on this route. In my preparations (pulling a chip from my collection for each casino I was going to visit so I could take a picture with it), I had not pulled anything for Eureka, so I was empty handed when we arrived. Oh, well. I figured I'd just have to take my pics without the chips in the frame. Jim and I decide to grab dinner (it's almost 6pm at this point) and the Owl Cafe is pretty much our only option on a Sunday night. After ordering, I grab my TCR and laptop and look up the addresses for the Lincoln Hotel, Louie's Lounge, Nevada Club, and the Owl Club. 3 of them have 5 digit street numbers. One has a 2 digit street number. All are on Main St, as one would expect in a tiny town on a main highway. I punch them into google maps. It removes the street number and says they're all just on "Main St". Well, that wasn't helpful at all. The Owl Club was easy enough as the cafe IS the Owl Club. Looking through a cut out hole in the wall leading to an adjacent bar, I ask our young waitress if there are any old-timers in there that might know where we can find our targets. She walks over and asks with me in tow. The answer is "Bill would, but he just went home". Dang. Another patron at the far end of the bar says "Why don't you ask the bartender? She's been here forever." So, we do, and she (Carla? Laura?) tells us Louie's Lounge is across the street and down a block or so. Later, I find it. Big ornate sign in disrepair is still there. We missed it as we came into town. Two other guys enjoying their Sunday tipple argue over whether the Lincoln Hotel is the same as the Alpine (it was), which is great, but they never get around to saying exactly where that is. I ask where the Nevada Club is, and everyone at the bar simultaneously points to the glass behind the bar to indicate that it's "On the other side of that wall". Turns out that the cafe and the bar are the old Owl Club, and the Nevada Club was right next door. Eventually, they were owned by the same people and the walls were opened up to make it one big happy place with pool tables currently occupying the Nevada Club floorspace (but with an Owl Club sign posted on one of the walls). I asked if any of them had any old casino chips they wanted to get rid of (I'm so sly with my bargain hunting, eh?) and lo and behold, I was gifted (yes, GIFTED!) a $5 Owl Club chip, 2 Owl Club tokens, and a 1oz SILVER commemorative Owl Club token (see pics). What a deal! That paid for our dinner, which included 2 Maker's Marks, by the way, and covered the $20 I donated to the museum earlier in the day. Eventually, I hit on a site that has the "Eureka walking tour" on it and it says the Lincoln Hotel is "#8". That's fantastic. Now, where exactly IS #8? I eventually figure it out by looking at the picture provided and driving down the street until I see it. And where is it? Next to Louie's. So, with my new Owl Chip in hand, I get ONE picture I wanted. The rest are just me standing in the dark in front of the others.

I had intended to get to some/most of the Ely casinos today (ambitious, clearly), but delays, fun and interesting locales and people, plus darkness forced me to put that off until tomorrow. So, I'll get up extra early, grab my free breakfast (no sitting down - you just ask for breakfast at the check-in window until the Covids head back to their home planet), and hit up the Ely casinos first thing. The only towns left to hit are McGill (just north of Ely a few miles) and Baker (slight jog to the south before heading into Utah).

Anyway, I hope you found this status update to be as fun to read as it was for me to experience and write up. See you tomorrow, and until then, enjoy today's pictures. ** NOTE ** There is one glaring error and one formatting error in the pictures. ** NOTE2 ** My sister's dog's name is Disco (it's a she) and in the middle somewhere is a picture of my neighbor and camera grip, Jim.