Day Three Vegas Vacation Northern Nevada Railway Museum, Ely NV

Well today we spent the morning at the Northern Nevada Railway Museum.  It wasn't actually open because they were having a photo session. Every year people from all over the world come to Ely to shoot photos of the steam engines.  

They stage the trains so amateurs and professional photographers can take pictures.  We got to tag along while they were at the station, after about an hour and a half they headed up the track to the hills, to take pictures amongst the scenery and mountains.

We did get to meet Mark Bassett the executive director of the museum, I recognized him from his many appearances on American Restoration. 

This is a show on the history channel that is based at Rick Dales Restoration Shop in Vegas. We also saw the speeder, Wig Wag, strong box and cement guns that had been restored on the show.

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Just outside of Ely were these beehive charcoal ovens.  Each over holds 36 cords of wood which were burned inside the over over 10 days to make charcoal which was used to smelt the copper from the local mine.

After Ely we headed down another long and boring highway at high speeds and we got into Vegas a day early. It was Presidents day weekend so believe it or not hotel rooms were a bit hard to find.  We tried a couple of the less popular casinos but it was still going to be over $150 for one night, so I discovered a new app for Wyndham Rewards and found a Howards Johnsons that was reasonable. It was located just North of the Stratosphere. Not the best area of town, in fact when we went for a walk for dinner we saw old police tape out in front of the hotel. Not sure when it was from but the rooms were clean and it was pretty much full, so we didn’t worry too much about it.