One Year Ago: Gold Country!

What's happening: One year ago I had the incredible opportunity to spend a week with my aunt, uncle, and cousins out in northern California playing tourist. I started writing this blog soon after the trip ended, and as I enjoyed myself so much, I have decided to write about my trip experiences in blog form.

Today I would like to share about the fun times my uncle, cousin, and I had visiting gold country. We visited two state parks: Marshall Gold Discovery, and Empire Mine. As you might imagine, the first is the actual site where gold was first discovered and the gold rush began. Empire Mine is the site of what was once one of the largest gold mining operations in California.

Marshall Gold Discovery was one of the two top spots that I had really wanted to go to - so fun to go there on the first day! I guess I had never really thought about what the site of that big gold rush discovery looked like, or if it was preserved at all. I was so happy to find out that it was preserved, and one of the nicest state parks I've ever visited, too! Fantastic visitor center, a really cool lineup of old buildings, and of course, the walk down to the American River where gold was first discovered back in 1848. Oh and we also found a really cool geocache under the back steps of the schoolhouse!

Well without further adeiu, here are the photos!

 Lovely, lovely mountains surround the area.

 First up was the schoolhouse! (Yeah, evidently it wasn't REALLY Christmas break... ;D)

 If you look closely, you might spy a geocache!

 I thought this corn husk doll was a real nice addition to the window.

Just one of the several really nice historic buildings in the park. It really felt like an old fashioned town, all lined up on the street...

 There were some very nice diaramas and informational signage in the museum!

 And the famous spot where James Marshall first discovered that nuggest of gold. Absoluetly beautiful view, and lots of fun historical markers to read!

 Last stop in the park was to drive up a bit of a mountain where we had this beautiful view. Standing guard there was a great statue of James Marshall himself (see below). Oh, and not surprisingly we found another geocache!

Then it was onto Empire Mine State Historic Park. There was a beautiful home we toured, then onto the gold mining buildings. We even got to descend and see the top of one of the chutes that the miners would traverse on their daily commute down. Deep, dark, steep and scary! But cool to see when I'm safely on the OTHER side of the bars! ;)

 It was really fascinating to learn about all the varied industries that supported the gold mining business.

 I really like the lighting in these shots (above) with the lighting on the smoke, and (below) just the light overall...really nice coming in from the side and bathing the otherwise dark and dusty contents in some fresh sunshine again!

 What a fun place!

Per my memory it was about an 8-hour day trip. Absolutely fantastic day - I mean, if visiting the site where gold was first discovered is not on my top-10 list of places I've ever filmed, I don't know what is!! Certainly good and long day. But I didn't know at the time that this was only the beginning!

See you tomorrow.