Minden, NV
Right beside transient parking at one of the world's great soaring fields; the airport even routes after-hours ramp access through the cafe. Four-egg omelettes, a menu full of aircraft names, full bar and Nevada gaming. Open daily from 6am, kitchen into the evening.
In the Carson Valley at 4,722ft MSL, 12 miles south of Carson City and 22 miles southeast of South Lake Tahoe. Single 7,400ft runway 16/34, Class D. One of the great soaring sites in the world — the lee wave off the Sierra crest creates altitude bands that have allowed gliders to climb to over 49,000 feet (the world distance and altitude records have both been set here, repeatedly). Soaring NV and High Country Soaring share the field with conventional GA. The valley is bounded by the Pine Nut Mountains on the east and the Carson Range/Sierra Nevada on the west — every glider release here lines up immediately with one of the major lift sources. Power pilots use the field as a Tahoe alternative when KTRK conditions deteriorate.
Straddling the California-Nevada line high in the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America and one of the deepest lakes on the continent — 1,645 feet — holding water famous for a clarity that can let you see 70 feet down. It formed in a fault basin and was scoured by glaciers; the water is so pure largely because little sediment flows in. The Nevada east shore is the wild, granite-and-pine side — Sand Harbor's boulder-strewn coves, the cobalt-to-turquoise shallows, and the climb up to the casinos at Stateline. Mark Twain, who camped here in 1861, called it "surely the fairest picture the whole earth affords."
In 1859, prospectors on the slopes of Mount Davidson hit the Comstock Lode — the richest silver strike in American history. Virginia City exploded into one of the largest, wealthiest towns in the West almost overnight, its mines funding the building of San Francisco and helping bankroll the Union in the Civil War (and giving Nevada the statehood, in 1864, that made it the "Silver State"). A young reporter named Samuel Clemens worked at the Territorial Enterprise here and first used the pen name "Mark Twain" in print in 1863. The boom faded, but unlike most ghost towns Virginia City survived — its steep main street of Victorian saloons, boardwalks, and the old Enterprise office is preserved as a National Historic Landmark district clinging to the mountainside.
7,056ft pass through the Sierra Nevada — the route of the Central Pacific Railroad's 1860s tunnels and the modern I-80. Named for the Donner Party, 87 pioneers who became trapped in winter snows at Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) in 1846-47; only 48 survived. The Donner Memorial State Park preserves the Murphy cabin site. From the air, the railway tunnels are visible threading the granite. KTRK is 5 miles east.
Mono Lake is at least 760,000 years old, three times saltier than the Pacific, and dotted with bizarre tufa towers — calcium carbonate spires that grew underwater from spring-fed mineral interactions and were exposed when LA diverted the lake's tributaries. Above the lake at 8,400 feet, Bodie State Historic Park preserves California's most authentic Gold Rush ghost town in "arrested decay" — wallpaper still on the walls, dishes still on the tables, exactly as the last residents left when the town died in the 1940s. Both visible from KBIH-area flights. Eastern Sierra magic.