calherewecome

In my last post, I talked about the routes from So Cal to the north. It was pointed out by my wife (a native Californian) that there is a fourth route that exists. That would be the inestimable Rt 101. Rte 101 follows the coast from LA to San Francisco. This is the ultimate in scenic routes. You go through Santa Barbara, Big Sur, Carmel and a host of other photo ops along the way. One of these days we will do the 101,

So we arrived at the Peppermill last Saturday for the Nevada Grand Chapter of OES. OES is the Order of Eastern Star which is a fraternal organization for men and women. More about Grand Chapter later.

The Peppermill is a huge facility. Large Casino operation plus meeting and banquet facilities, Checkin went pretty smoothly. There was a short line, but it went pretty quick. The parking was valet parking though you could self park if you insisted. The bellman unloaded all of our stuff and got it up to room real quick.

So far so good. The room was good size. It had king size bed, couch, desk and chairs. Included coffee pot, wifi and all of the normal amenities. Wifi was fast when you could get a signal. It was intermittent at best. One strike for crappy wifi.

The decor was a sort a Queen Anne motif along with paintings of Tuscan motif. Even a painting in the bath room. It seemed a bit odd to me.

We attend four banquet meals during our stay. All of the meals were absolutely fantastic. Feeding a large crowd all at the same time can be a real challenge. The Peppermill wait staff were absolutely fantastic. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Okay now lets talk about the casino. Nevada is the only state in the USA that stills allows cigarette smoking in public spaces. I don’t really blame the Peppermill for this but the place stunk of cigarette smoke. They did have a small non-smoking gaming area. This was the first time in over 25 years that I saw a cigarette machine. $9 for a pack of cigarettes.

Casinos are designed to be a disorienting space and the Peppermill is no different. It takes a good long while to figure out your way around. I don’t gamble so I just had to make my way through the casino section. The noise is deafening.

We are looking forward to a trip in November to Las Vegas to a non-smoking, non-casino resort. Betcha didn’t know that such an thing existed in Vegas.

Overall, it was a decent experience. All of the events were in one place. We didn’t have to go anywhere else during our stay. If you don’t care about OES, then stop here.

Nevada OES is certainly much smaller then either CA OES or MA OES. About 20 chapters spread out around the state. Several chapters around Reno and the same around Las Vegas. Getting from the chapters in the north to the ones in Vegas is not so easy. There is I80 running from Reno to Wendover in the East for about 400 miles. There is no interstate between Reno and Las Vegas. So going from Reno to Vegas is a challenge.

That’s pretty much it for the hotel part of this post. The rest is about OES in general and Nevada OES in specific.

The folks that we met at NV GC were very friendly. They made our stay very enjoyable.

The registration process was oh so very easy. They had a single spreadsheet on their web site where you could select our hotel accommodations and the banquets that you planned to attend. Fill out the spread sheet and send it in with one check for the banquets. One stop shopping, so to speak. In CA and MA, one has to download flyers for each banquet. Write a check for each banquet and send it to the chairperson.

Elections were an interesting process. There were five women running for the office of Assoc Grand Conductress. None of the candidates were allowed to give a campaign speech or to campaign during the months leading up to Grand Chapter. The process took four votes before one candidate finally got a majority.
Candidates were asked if they wanted to withdraw, but were not required to do so. In MA the bottom vote getters would be required to withdraw.

Also Grand Sentinel is an elected office like in MA but not in CA. We think the GS goes up the line as in MA. Grand Sentinel in CA is an appointed office and does not go up the line. We met people from CA, AZ, ID and WA. Our thanks to Linda (Grand Representative to MA in NV) for being very gracious host.

So now we are in Utah to visit Neil. We are going to visit the Utah Museum of Science and Industry to see the Leonardo exhibit.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Reno NV