On 19 May (Friday) we went to Columbia State Park for a living history festival called “Columbia Diggins 1852”. It turns out the entire state park is a living history location. It was great fun. There were hotels, restaurants, homes, stores, etc. that were from the early gold rush days – blocks and blocks of them. There was even a stagecoach ride that I had to take, just because. The stage was “held up” by a masked bandit, causing the children on the stage enormous amounts of fun.
The “Diggins” was a tent city with lots of costumed docents teaching (mostly children) how to do laundry in a wash tub, how to pan for gold, how to use a sluice and a rocker for gold, how to bake in a wood fired brick/stone oven, and other fun things.
We bought some food and some very small presents for the granddaughters.
On Saturday we went to Jamestown and their 1897 Railroad Park. This is another California State Historic Park. There is a working oil fueled steam train and cars that you can take on a short excursion. Of course we did it. The train only runs on Saturday’s and Sundays, and the entire trip took 45 minutes. It was well worth the $15 per person cost.
Saturday night was pizza at the Pizza Factory in Groveland with the remaining rally attendees. The pizza was very good, and I highly recommend the place. No atmosphere but good food.
We decided to do most of the cleaning and packing on Saturday so we could get an easy start home on Sunday. It worked; we were out of the campground by 8:00. The original plan was to find a Forest Service campground somewhere near Lake Tahoe or Reno, but the Tahoe area was too crowded for us. It was a beautiful lake, but not worth the number of people. We decided to just head home in two days instead of our planned three, so we ended up in Winnemucca, NV again. This time we stayed at the KOA which is actually quite nice. Real cable TV so I can watch the news is very pleasant. The internet isn’t very good from the campground, but I am running great on my Verizon hot spot. Since we have a full hookup site we can get all the tanks dumped and cleaned before heading home. I really like being able to do that on the last night of a trip. There is some road noise from I-80, but I expect much of that to die down later tonight. We have the windows and doors open right now, cooling off in the lovely evening air. Home tomorrow!