Greetings From Highway 49
 

I have this week off from work. Bill and I decided to take a road trip up to the California gold country. We’re in Oakhurst right now. Tomorrow, we’ll be traveling up highway 49.

The hotel we’re staying at tonight is very nice – woodsy and rustic and well maintained. Lots of carved bears and eagles; even a huge Statue of liberty carved from a redwood trunk. We had dinner at the restaurant, and the food was very good.

Then… there are the paintings. Everywhere. Hundreds of them. In the rooms. In the lobby. In the restaurant. And murals. Every room has one; even the exercise room! Landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes of really big flowers. They’re all the work of, Delores; the wife of the hotel owner. She may be no Rembrandt - but bless her 76 year old heart - what she lacks in talent, she makes up in shear volume.

What Hotel are you at? You should stop by and say Hi to my Bro and SiL.

Mariposa has a small but nice gold museum as well as as few good antique shops.

Yay! Sounds like fun! Have a great time! :)

Be sure to drive thru the Oakhurst McDonald's and say Hi to Thurston's bear friends too,

When you're in Sonora can you stop at the casino? They still owe me $40 that one of their slot machines forgot to give back to me.

If you want a nice side trip when you get to Jackson (where 49 crosses 88), if you head east you'll get to Volcano, California. There is a cave there that has very nice formations and a pretty good tour.

We just did our own little road trip out that way, taking Highway 4 all the way to Lake Tahoe (a completely new route for us). A very nice drive through the Sierras up there.

Oh, this sounds like such a grand California adventure!



Have fun, you two! :D

It sounds like you are at the Best Western Yosemite Gateway Inn {or something close to that}.

I have a picture in front of that carved statue! LOL We like to stay there, and, the fellow in the restaurant, he was very nice. He was from San Diego area, I forget his name. Not a young chap, but of course, neither am I.

The murals, lovely aren't they? I always take photos of them, that is the start of our trip, the murals in the rooms.

49, ah, I wish we were on that trip!

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ca/chinese.html

If you go by this place, I wonder if these places are still intact. When we've gone, I haven't seen anything that seemed visitable. Except right off of the highway, I believe, is this place that may be an old gas station. They sell indian things there, if I am right. We just stopped there to use the restroom as none of the gas stations seemed to have one {when we needed one}. The gentlemen there were nice and they just asked for a donation to use the clean bathrooms. Not a problem!! That place was interesting, too, you go into a yard and that has artifacts laying around.

Are you heading in to Placerville? And from there? Ooo, when you head home, will you be heading by San Jose? I've always wanted to stop here, but never have. Oh, link didn't work. But, 'Brookdale Lodge'. It is near San Jose but not really. Off some beaten path, but, still on a roadway/highway.

Oh, and we've only been once but finally, we went to Fresno Flats. A lot of history there...

http://www.fresnoflatsmuseum.org/ as well as not far from the hotel you are at.

Have a lot of fun and take a lot of pictures!!!

Have fun!

[mom] And stay off the computer, it's nice outside![/mom]

Oops! Bill just read that over my shoulder. I doubt he'll let me go antiquing. :(

That's the place!

Placerville, yes. We plan to go as far up as Nevada City, then back home through Sacramento. I have a sister near Lodi. We're going to stop by there on the way back.

I will have to see where Nevada City is.

Cool! I actually really like that little place. And, don't forget to take your room key to get the discount on breakfast. ;)

Sacramento~I think you are lucky to go when you are. When we went, it was late Saturday, left early Sunday, I think. The places we wanted to go, like, the fort {I forget the name} were closed. We had wanted to take our son all over to educational but fun places.

Aw, I hope you get to go antiquing!!! {sp} Such fun!! I think it was in Jamestown we stopped and checked out a few places as we stopped for the boy to pan for gold, right there on the main street.

Everywhere, it is beautiful. Whether it be the landscape or the looking at a building and realizing it is so old and it's features that make it so.

Have fun and, yea, limit your computer use but still keep in touch with us and let us know what is going on. Well, what you wanna. :p

When I was a kid, we had a house in Coulterville. I loved spending my summer vacations up there.

Highway 49 Revisited

We left Oakhurst this morning. First stop Mariposa. Pretty, but all the antique stores were closed. Saw the museum Cool.

After a tortuous and winding trip trough the mountains, Coulterville was next. Quaint, but kinda run down. Again, everything was closed.

We stopped in Sonora for lunch. We ate in a little hole-in-the-wall named Miner’s Café. Good food, cool antiquey decor, and very friendly staff. Highly recommended. We prowled around town for a bit. The stores were open!

Next was Angel’s Camp; home of those famous jumping frogs. The site of Mark Twain’s cabin is supposed to be just outside of town, but we couldn’t find it. We did, however, pass the Glory Hole Recreation Area and the adjacent Glory Hole Shopping Center! The town of Angel’s Camp is cool. They have plaques in the sidewalks honoring record winning frogs, kind of an Amphibian Walk Of Fame. We were surprised to see several art deco buildings in town.

We almost missed Mokelumne Hill. The main part of town (not that there’s much town) is just off the highway. When they coined the term “sleepy little town”, they were thinking of Mokelumne Hill. Again, nothing was open. The only person we saw was one of the locals who came over to talk to us about my Mini. He has one the same color....

Jackson was a disappointment, and we didn’t stop.

Our last stop of the day (Before Placerville; where we are now) was our favorite town; Sutter Creek. Very quaint. As it was starting to get late, we didn’t stay long. But we did get ice cream at the old Ice Cream Parlor on the main drag. Yum… ice cream!

The stretch from Sutter Creek to Placerville was my favorite of the whole day. Part of what made it fun was that we had Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps in the CD player. It was the perfect soundtrack!

In Jackson, did you see the "historic" little strip or just the part visible from 49?

Not that the "historic" part is very good (when we're in the area we usually end up spending 30 minutes walking the strip and then move on).

*Biting Tongue*

Must... not... comment...

Yes, apparently they ate at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the wrong town.

I wonder if a lot of places were closed because of it being a weekday? What is so sad to me is how the economy has hit everyone. A lot of stores closed down and others made to only be open a few days, mostly the weekends. We ran into that all over. As well as towns shutting down early.....

Oh, I forgot you guys have the mini!!! OOOOOO!!!! I so want to rent one for a road trip. But, with 3 kids, it ain't too practical, eh?

Sutter Creek~is this the place with the big gold mine? We also panned for gold there {if it is the place}.

Did you find {buy} any antiques? :D All I bought on our trip was a silver ring.....in a gold mining town. Oh well.

You {Lashbear and Alex} are too funny.

We saw it as we sped by. We decided it didn't look interesting enough to stop.

Oh, why not? We made plenty of comments!

You could get 3 very small kids in the back.

Yes, Sutter Creek has the gold mine you can visit, but it had already closed for the day.

Here's an official US Government site about the Glory Hole Recreation Area: (You can't make this shyt up!)

Thanks for that link, I'll favorite it. I would like to, someday, take a couple of days to do the 49, not just one.

Ah, yes, the Gold Mine was closing as we were there. It was still daylight. I didn't take the 'tour'. I would love to pay whomever it is you pay and have them take us up into the hills to pan for gold. I've read they'll take you to a place, out of the way I'm guessing, and set you up to pan. I'd imagine they own the lands so you can't just wander in.

Oh,I have two big boys and one petite girl. Eh, we'll just leave them at home. :0)

So, are you now at Placerville? Did you go by the Hangmans Bar? Or whatever it is called, I am sorry, bad, bad with names. :blush:

Thanks for posting here and there, I am stuck here, wanting to be there {anywhere but here} and so this is nice to hear about your adventure. :coffee:

We found that the Hangman's Bar just closed (as in, went out of business) on Sunday! We just missed it!

After 2 days of marathon driving, we're taking it easy today. We toured the historic downtown Placerville this morning. We're resting in the room right now. In a little bit, we're going to head out to spend a couple hours here.

Are you going to have Hangtown Fry? (I'm not even sure if that is where the name comes from - probably not since there is no connection between Gold country and oysters.)

so you've been past the world's largest Gloryhole, then?

Oh, finally one that I can squeeze through. :p





On a serious note, I'm wondering if it was a tad depressing seeing how depressed the economies were along Old Route 49.




(With a similar Great Depression II heading to your local neighborhood soon!)

Along the lines of "it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all..." I wonder if "it is better to have have opened a schlocky small-town antique shop on the back of a tech and housing economic bubble than to have never opened a shop at all..."

We went in a gold mine! It was cool (literally)!

I have to say that I felt a bit depressed driving through. On vacation. Spending money I probably should be squirreling away for when the depression hits my local neighborhood......

Oh gosh darn bummer about the Hangmans' Bar!!! Did they say if it were permanant? :(

I added the link to the goldpark to my favorites, it looks interesting!

That's right.. I forgot your package was.... Alarming.

I love going in old mines that don't collapse on you ! Did you see any bats ?

AHHHH!! BATS!!

That saddens me about Coulterville. I remember getting to sit at the bar in the Jefferson hotel and drink sasparilla. We also got a neat tour of the hotel, but they wouldn't let us ride up the staircase in the lift chair.

Made it to Sac Town. Hotel room is teeny!

Full daily update later....

Your mission: Find Sac Town Chronic!! and bring him back alive.


(or, ya know, just find some Sac Town chronic and get really freaking high.)










or both.

I am really enjoying this pseudo-blog!

So what hotel are you staying at in Sactown?

{when we stayed there, we stayed out of the town, I forget the name of the place but it was only minutes from SacTown...}

Ooo, have fun today! I hope everything is open for you, the fort, the capital, the old town, etc. etc. etc. :D

We're at the La Quinta Inn on Jibboom. Not recomended. Postage stamp sized rooms. Beds made of concrete slabs. Psychotic AC.

yesterday, we went to the Marshall Gold Discovery SHP in Coloma. Kinda cool, but dead on a weekday. We were completely underwhelmed by the actual site of the discovery. You walk down a little trail to a brackish backwater area, and all there is is an old faded interpretive sign.

Some of the rangers, however, were mighty impressive! :D

We then drove up to Nevada City. We loved it! It's our favorite gold rush town. Very cute.

We're leaving in a few to go see the Capitol Building. (Maybe we'll see Ahnold!)

We went to the state capitol building this morning. We walked around Capitol Park first. Beautiful. We went in and toured the building. We were there when Assembly and Senate leaders were giving a press conference regarding the budget crisis. Ahnold, we were told, was not in the building.

While we were leaving, I tripped and fell just outside the door. I fell on my left hip. Fortunately, I’m well padded…

We had lunch at a nearby restaurant while I waited for my hip to stop hurting; then we walked around the area. We visited the Stanford Mansion, but didn’t take the hour long tour.

After returning to the hotel for a rest, we drove down to my sister’s house near Lodi. My niece and her two sons (who live nearby) where there also. We all went out to dinner at a very good teppanyaki place. (Who knew you could find good teppanyaki in Lodi?!)

My brother-in-law’s father passed away recently. He and the stepson he lived with were both horders. My sister and b-i-l are still clearing out the house. It's completely uninhabitable, and they are going to donate it to the fire department for them to burn down. They gave us a tour of the place. You could tell that it once was a beautiful old house. Such a shame.

Ok… Last boring travelogue (from this trip, at least). I’ll make it short as I’m sure you’re all getting tired of them.

We drove over to Sutter’s Fort. Met the most adorable reenactor at the front gate. I forgot his name, but he was yummy!

We loved Sutter’s Fort. Fascinating place. I’d love to go back when it’s full of reenactors. (There was just one this morning – Mr Yummy.)

Afterwards, we headed back across the city towards Old Sacramento. On the way, we started seeing rainbow flags. We discovered the gay section of town! We stopped for lunch at a micro brewery there.

Spent all afternoon in Old Sacramento. Saw the city history museum there, but alas… we didn’t have time to see the railroad museum.

Came back to the hotel; tired and sore. (My left hip started to bother me. Obviously, I’m not completely over yesterdays fall.) Had dinner at a nice seafood restaurant near the hotel.

We head home tomorrow.

Oh, we're not bored at all. This has been a fun diviersion, and it's been so cool going along Route 49 with you vicariously.




In fact, tell us more stories before you start forgetting.








Start with Mr. Yummy.

Mr Yummy:

Oh... While I'm at it... Here's some of the glorious art from the hotel in Oakhurst:

Beautiful.









the artwork is nice, too.

I am loving these reports. Please keep them coming.

Though i will admit to being more interested in the locations than the hotties.

We're home. The car's unpacked. Time to relax.

As soon as I can, I'll get the pictures online.

I have the first day's pictures up. Enjoy. I'll work on the rest tomorrow.

Day two. (Is anyone reading this thread anymore?)

I'm still reading :)

Absolutely, but I will have to check the pix at a later time.

Day six (Last one!)

Great pictures. Was all that artwork from your room? It looks like a nice relaxing trip, except for the fall you took. How's the hip?

I love the pics.
:)

I ate at a cool BBQ place in Mariposa.

I'm still reading, but I likely won't have time to check the pics till this evening.


Good thing GD and CP's Scotland pictures likely won't be up till early '09!