At Thanksgiving we went to visit my sister in Reno. We arrived a few days early, hit Death Valley – totally awesomely beautiful – then followed Google Maps directions through a bunch of sagebrush and really, really small towns in the middle of absolutely nowhere…. It got darker and darker, and started to rain, and the wind started blowing and the route kept sending us along sketchier and sketchier roads, until we found ourselves on a winding road with no shoulder and a cliff on one side called Seven Mile Gulch, down down down and then up up and up again until the road we were on dead-ended into a main street. We turned right and found ourselves driving through Virginia City.

The Virginia City.

Where Mark Twain ended up after his cross-country stagecoach ride, pony express riders zipping past, meeting gunslingers and Indians, and early Mormons, and bartenders, and wound up working on the Virginia City newspaper before quitting to mine for silver which led him to one thing and another, and a trip to Hawaii and…

This is one of my favorite books. I’m a fan of the old west – maybe because of my exposure to Tombstone at an early age – or maybe because of my exposure to Mark Twain’s Roughing It at an early age. I’ve read a lot of nonfiction about wagon trains, orphan trains, women’s lives in the west, etc.

The modern Virginia City was a disappointment. There’s a certain kind of tourist town that specializes in tacky 2nd Amendment t-shirts, fudge, and stuffed kittens. As much as I love Mark Twain, I can’t like this kind of town for his sake.

I’m much happier reading about his Virginia City.

If you’ve never read any of Mark Twain’s non-fiction, I recommend starting with this one. During his day, Mark Twain was huge on the lecture circuit – think stand-up comedy of the storytelling type, like Michael Moore or Tig Notaro. There’s a reason why they call the U.S. comedy awards the Mark Twain Awards.

No matter how many times I’ve read Roughing It, it’s never too many.

Now if I could just put my hand on my copy of Innocents Abroad…