Who flies to Reno on a spring evening, rents a car and heads into the mountains with no skis, no mountain bike and a backpack full of books? and Why? Because in 1861 a 25-year-old Missouri riverboat pilot named Sam Clemens boarded a stagecoach bound for the same territory.
He was going to dodge the Civil War for a few months, work for the government, do some writing, maybe dig for silver. Instead he stayed for almost seven years, emerged as Mark Twain, gave us “Huckleberry Finn” and won global fame as that sardonic old man with the white hair and droopy mustache.
But what do we know about the young Clemens in Nevada and California? Not much. That’s why this author had Twain’s Western memoir, “Roughing It” (1872), and two biographies in his backpack, and it’s why he spent the next four days on a 270-mile road trip and Twain pilgrimage.
He wanted to see some of what Clemons saw in those early travels — a dusty Nevada silver-mining town, the shores of Lake Tahoe, the hills of California Gold Country. And he wondered: After so much history, myth and marketing, how much Twain remains?
Near Incline Village, NV the Flume Trail is one of the most popular hiking and mountain biking paths in the region. Within minutes, you are surrounded by pines, a vast indigo lake sprawling below. When Twain and a buddy arrived here in 1861 (before his time in Virginia City), it was known as Lake Bigler. Now we know it as Tahoe.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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