Gun Blogger Rendezvous III - Part Four

Sunday morning a few of us still in Reno got together for breakfast. After breakfast we headed out in different directions for some last minute sightseeing, shopping, and exploring. Phil and David (and a couple of other folks?) were off to see the car museum. (If you've never seen the Reno car museum, it's definitely worth seeing!) Joe, Barb, KeeWee and I had several stops planned.

Barb had heard about a big liquidator/overstock/remnant store in Reno that was worth checking out. It was kinda interesting, and I picked up a fly fishing book "Go-To Flies" by Tony Lolli. I contributed a bit when the book was originally put together, and it really is an excellent reference on flies that actually catch fish. No, I don't get a dime for plugging it.

Go-To Flies by Tony Lolli and 101 fly fishing guides!

After cruising the liquidator store, we decided to go check out a new Sporting Goods store called Scheel's Outfitters that had just opened a couple of weeks ago in Reno. The store was so new we couldn't even find driving directions on Joe's GPS/Maps gizmo. As we were exploring I spotted A Shepler's Western Wear store. I had heard that Shepler's had a lot of good stuff but I'd never been in one of their stores. I was kinda looking for a good pair of cowboy boots for Cowboy Fast Draw matches. I didn't find anything I liked, but KeeWee found some clothes she liked and I think Barb did too. We got to talking with the guy at the cash register and he had helped to wire the new Scheel's store, so he knew exactly where it was and how to get there. COOL!

......... on the road again!

Scheel's Outfitters in Reno.

When we pulled into the parking lot it was a bit mind-boggling to see just how big the store actually was. In the above picture I was a long ways back and full wide angle and I still couldn't get it all in the picture. It turns out it's 300,000 square feet, all in one building. To put that in perspective, an acre is 43,560 square feet! That figures out to 6.89 acres of floor space.

Scheel's parking lot tram.

The parking lot was pretty full, and they even have a tram to shuttle you from the outer areas of the parking lot to the store entrance.

One end of the archway aquarium.

Just inside the main entrance is a huge aquarium/archway/portal that you walk through to get into the main part of the store. I'd guess it must be fifteen or twenty feet from column to column. Somewhere I read that it holds 16,000 gallons of water. In short, it's big, and it's spectacular!

One of the aquarium columns.

After you have passed through the archway aquarium, you see the fully restored 1930's era ferris wheel in the center of the store. It's 65 feet high. If a building story is roughly ten feet, then it's six and a half stories high.

The Ferris wheel.

We were all getting hungry, so we hit the Scheel's restaurant first for some lunch. The food was good! After lunch we were off to explore.

All over the store there were displays of taxidermy, full size animated US presidents, and other stuff to grab your attention.

The store was packed with folks checking it out!

Barb and KeeWee headed off in one direction and Joe and I made a bee line for the gun department. It was well stocked and the prices were clearly marked.

Guns......

Even more guns.....

Yessir, lotsa guns!!

Taxidermy mountain.

On the second floor there was a huge taxidermy mountain. Very impressive!

Bullwinkle?

Also on the second floor was a three car NASCAR racing simulator. The lineup was long to give it a try, or I would have been in one of those cars all day!

Three car NASCAR Racing simulator.

The cars were each mounted on hydraulics so they bumped, tipped and bounced around syncronised with what the car was doing.

NASCAR Simulator - Check out the wrap-around visuals for the driver!

Float plane 3/4 scale model. Even so, it was probably a 20 or 25 foot wingspan!

After several hours at Scheel's we were starting to get worn out, and we still hadn't seen all of the store! We'll have to come back next year and see the rest of it......

After Scheel's it was back to the hotel to clean up a bit, then Mr. And Mrs. JimmyB, Joe, Barb, KeeWee and I headed out to dinner at a restaurant (The Brown Bear, or something like that?) that we had spotted in our travels. The dinner was good, but it was kinda sad to realize that the weekend was finally coming to an end. We had all had a wonderful time, saw some new sights, enjoyed each other's company, emptied brass, gained weight, met new folks, and raised over $2000 for Project Valour-IT. Each year the Rendezvous gets better, and this was definitely the best Rendezvous ever. I can hardly wait until next year!