We had been assured that the coffee shop across the street would be open for breakfast by 
WaPaShone
7 am, so we arrived at its front door, hungry, at 7:22. No one was there. Our second choice, the closest Denny's, was also closed. Had we entered a time warp? We suspect it is just part of the larger picture of Reno resting after the summer and holiday tourists have departed. Jack's Restaurant, which has not changed since our last visit more than a decade ago, provided breakfast this morning.
Bob had done some reference work on Reno, using the book Weird Las Vegas and Nevada as his guide. We followed his list and found a collection of local sights: a U-Haul trailer many feet off the ground, a black spider rooftop sculpture built from an old VW beetle, and - our favorite - a chainsaw sculpture of an Indian in Idlewild park. It is one of about 70 Indian head sculptures by the Hungarian-born Akron artist Peter Wolf Toth. This one honors the WAshoe, PAiute, and Sho SHONE bands living near Reno. Idlewild Park is a 
Scheel's sport fish tank
lovely large area of the city, with a lake which today had crowds of ducks and geese. Adjacent to the lake is Newtown Heights, an area popular with local celebrities and wealthy Reno-ites in the 1950s. The architect who drew the plans for many of the structures was happy to present different styles; today you can drive past a Tudor-style home next to a Southern plantation home adjacent to a Southwestern mission home possibly of adobe. One visitor to the park was a young man, possibly three years old, riding a motorcycle with training wheels. His father was close at hand but the child clearly had 
Scheel's ferris wheel
almost mastered driving it.
We spent perhaps an hour in Scheel's. an enormous outdoor outfitter famous in Reno. One of the first sights was a glass divider between two departments, an aquarium with colorful coral-type backgrounds for large fish (there is a smaller, similar aquarium on the other side of the building with tropical fish). Since it's an outfitter, the décor includes stuffed game animals and trophy heads with impressive antlers. But the most surprising piece of furniture in the store is a three-story high ferris wheel. While we were there, one father and his young son took a ride.
In Sparks, we stopped to see a statue of Last Chance Joe, a 36-foot tall brightly painted statue of an amiable-looking gent next to the Sparks city museum. This little 
Last Chance Joe
string of shops, Victorian Square, is punctuated by historical structures - a New England-type church, some train cars, others - supposedly illustrating Victorian times; after all, it is named Victorian Park.
After all this sightseeing, we needed to gamble, so we visited some casinos, of which Baldini's was our favorite. It's south of the center of Reno, far from the clutch of big-grand casino-hotels, and chock full of local gamblers. It's where we found lunch, too, down-market diner grub at prices about half those of the big restaurants.
By now we were getting tired, so we returned to our hotel to relax and enjoy looking at the end of a winter day which, in spite of the weather forecast, was sunny, with almost no winds, and clear views of the mountains which surround Reno on all sides.
A good day.