Today we walked through Coloma and the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
This was a cold and foggy morning, but warmed up later. As I was typing here something just popped and ricocheted everywhere… I could not figure out what it was.. thought maybe it was something inside the fridge outside… looked and nothing. Saw some water next to the coffee maker, so as I was wiping it I saw a cork in the sink… then realized Carol had opened a sparkling water and “closed” it with that cork… which had popped. Hahahahah.. mystery solved.
Our plan for the day was to go to the Gold Discovery Park nearby, so I let everyone wake up whenever they wanted. I had both space heaters on and was trying to warm up the trailer and get rid off some of the condensation on the windows. That also caused the trailer to warm up good and the bunks got pretty warm, so the girls were up around 9… hahaha… Carol stayed in bed a little longer. We didn’t have to go far, so everyone just took their time getting ready, meaning changing and having breakfast.
The trailer had extra condensation on the windows today, they were all pretty wet and dripping. The bathroom door frame, which is aluminum was also dripping. The constant condensation on the window and door frames, and on the glass from the windows is starting to bug me a lot. I’m now considering getting a dehumidifier, seriously considering it because the other ways to minimize are just not happening here. So for today, I got all the fans going and we dried the windows by hand too, lots of puddles by windows. Fans usually help keep them dry during the day, our problem is usually overnight. I read somewhere that RV furnaces add humidity to the inside, so that doesn’t help either. <insert eye roll>
We were all ready to go around 11, had a back pack with water, snacks and two beers :). Carol said we should take the truck, but I convinced her to just walk there. The park is a mile from here, so usually a 20 minute walk. We took our time walking there, and had a really nice walk.
We hit the edge of the park within 10 minutes, and there were people going in the water in kayaks, stand up paddle boards, etc. Very nice area for that.
There was a sign and some life vets hanging too, and those were “free” for the use. That was nice, you could just take one, use, and then return. Impressive!
We stopped quick to drink some water and a sign caught my attention. The sign said to be careful with the water level as it could change quite a bit and quickly, then it had three boxes with drawings in it. The first one was a stick person with water up to the knees. The next one in the middle was the same person with water up to the neck, and the last one on the right was the same stick person upside down and under water. hahahahaha… pretty funny. Then, upon reading the rest of the sign they explain that there is a dam upstream and when they release water the river level can change drastically. Makes sense.
We started checking out the park from the end we walked in from, so the first area we saw was the old mill. The whole story is that Marshall came to this area to build a mill, but didn’t have enough workers to help build it. Around the same time the army recruited (or allowed) Mormons to join, and over 500 came to the area for a war. Marshall hired 100 or so of them to help build the milll. In the process, they found gold, and word got out and created a gold rush in the area. The mill was pretty much abandoned and people from all over the world came to the area in search of gold. The park has some stuff that was rebuilt or kept.
The old mill was rebuilt in a different spot, the original spot has a marker. Some buildings were kept by mormons, other buildings are still used as stores.
There are remnants of the jail still there. There are monuments, and a church. It’s pretty cool to see and learn more about the story.
This gold rush put California on the world map, helped develop the Mormon trail, and the Oregon trail.
And then there’s the story of the San Francisco 49ers, which were the people that rushed to the area in 1949 in search of gold. There’s a highway 49 around here too, but I don’t think it was part of the story 🙂
We stayed in the area for like 3 hours or so.
We walked around quite a bit and totaled over 4 miles for the entire time.
It was a nice time. hahahahah
We then walked back home to have lunch.
I was going to make steaks, and Bia wanted to season them again. We got going right away when we got back as we were all hungry.
Bia seasoned the steaks with coarse sea salt, as she had learned, and we grilled together. The steaks turned out awesome, and between Bia, Bella and I we finished the three steaks in no time. They were juicy and salted perfectly. Yummmmm…. Carol then brought Asparagus, Sweet potatoes and mushrooms to the grill. She got those done and we ate pretty much everything we had out today, no left overs.
I had promised the girls we’d get ice cream after lunch since they were so good with our walking today, and I had seen a Frozen Yogurt place across the street, so we went there. There are a few stores in that area, but they were all closed. There was a restaurant open, but they didn’t have any desserts. Bummer. We went back to get the truck and go to the closest gas station. The girls found what they wanted at the gas station, got a candy each, and I got a six pack of a beer I had not tried yet.
After we got back to the campground, we went for a walk around here. Carol had not seen the campground yet, so we walked to the beach, then kept going towards the bridge. It was a nice walk. When we were by the bridge we were, again, throwing rocks, skipping rocks, etc. Always fun. It was getting dark pretty quick and we started walking back, it was 5 or so.
After we got back to the trailer we just relaxed. Carol was doing a magazine project with the girls, and I was checking Facebook. Then we put some Xmas show on and watched a few episodes. It’s like a Xmas decoration make over show, where this guy comes to your place and goes all out decorating your place for Xmas. I think Carl and the girls got some ideas for the trailer 🙂 hahahah…
That was it for us, had to get the girls in bed timely as tomorrow is a school day.