Santa Cruz Coastal Mountains & Pigeon Point Light House

One Saturday morning Karen and decided to take a drive down Hwy. 9 through the mountains. We started in San Jose grabbed a Starbucks in Los Gatos and headed down to Big Basin State Park on Hwy. 236. We drove through the majestic redwood trees and down to Boulder Creek.

Big Basin Redwoods

 

 We then proceeded to head down Hwy.1 to Costanoa Campgrounds in Pescadero CA. Costanoa is a interesting place to stay. Connected to four state parks, 30,000 acres of hiking trails and a vibrant wildlife reserve, Costanoa offers the unique opportunity to experience outdoor living in comfortable, stylish surroundings. Accommodations include canvas cabins, Douglas Fir cabins and a forty room lodge. Special features include on-site spa services, horseback riding, mountain bike rentals, children? s activities and a General Store and Cafe. We read the local attractions guide in the lodge and it recommended that we try the famous Artichoke / Garlic bread at Norm's Market in Down Town Pescadero...so off we went.

Tent Cabin

Comfort Station

  

We then headed down the road to Pigeon Point lighthouse. Perched on a cliff on the central California coast, the 115-foot Pigeon Point Lighthouse, one of the tallest lighthouses in America, has been guiding mariners since 1872. Its five-wick lard oil lamp, and first-order Fresnel lens, comprised of 1,008 prisms, was first lit at sunset, November 15, 1872. The lens stands 16 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and weighs 8,000 pounds. It sits in a lantern room that had been constructed at the Lighthouse Service's general depot in New York before being shipped around the Horn. Although the original Fresnel lens is no longer in use, the lighthouse is still an active U.S. Coast Guard aid to navigation using a 24 inch Aero Beacon.

After visiting the light house we proceeded south down Hwy.1 to Downtown Pescadero  and ran across hundreds of Kite Surfers along the coast.

  

Once in Pescadero we strolled down Main Street visiting many of the unique antiquity shops in the area. We stopped into a local store called Norm's Market to try their famous Artichoke / Garlic bread.


 

This is their signature bread--They take whole roasted and seasoned Artichoke quarters and hand-roll them into the Garlic Herb French dough. Each loaf of bread contains the equivalent of 2-4 small-to-midsized artichoke hearts, cut into quarters! You won't find anything like this anywhere! A very popular loaf. They sell it about 80% baked so you can take it home and finish it your oven. We did not know this at the time... but it tasted great anyway.

Gold Bug Mine & Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park

Karen and I were visiting her folks last weekend. We were trying to decide what to do for the weekend, her parents wanted to take us to do some wine tasting in the local region. We jumped in the car and headed out. We had a wonderful Mexican lunch in Shingle Springs at Colina Del Oro. With our tummies full and the road ahead of us we stopped at a few area wineries to sample some the regions wonderful wines.

We stopped first at the Toogood Estate Wine Caves in Fairplay, CA. there we tasted some of the featured wines and explored the wine cave cellars. Then we headed to Oakstone Winery also in Fairplay, CA. to sampler their Slug Gulch Red table wine.

  

 The next morning we hit the road and headed out to Gold Bug Mine & Park in Placerville, CA. Once there we explored the outside of the mine and visitors center.

   

Once inside the visitors center we paid $5.00 for a Hardhat and Magic wand voice guided tour of the mine. The tour is narrated by a "Ghost Miner" who wants to tell you about the mine. It wasn't scary at all, just be sure to not let your 4 year old know that there are ghosts in the mine. The tour was fun but wet, ground water penetrates and drips through out the mine in the wet months. The tour basically explains mining lingo and gives a you a feel what the conditions were like for miners.

Because the mining claims were no longer worked or expanded, the Bureau of Land Management took over the land as public property. In the early 1960's the federal government under the Recreational Use Purposes Act leased properties to government entities for just that - recreational use. In 1965 the City of Placerville received the lease with the promise that the land would not be sold, divided or used for any other purpose than recreation. Under a 25 year lease agreement the City prepared to create a park.

In April 1980, Hangtown's Gold Bug Park Development Committee, Inc, was formed to clean up, protect and defend the property for public use.

On February 1, 1985, the park was approved for listing in the National Register of Historic Places and also as a State Point of Interest on the California registry. Gold Bug Park is now owned and operated by the City of Placerville. The City of Placerville is the only municipality in the state of California to own a gold mine. Today, you can step back in time to the mid 1800's and experience what it was like to be a miner in the gold rush era.

  After we toured the Gold Bug, we headed about 8 Miles down Hwy.49 to Coloma, specifically Marshall Gold Discovery Park .  To the site where gold was discovered and the gold rush all began. Marshall's monument, the original gold discovery site and several historic buildings became part of California's state park system in 1927. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park features a museum, many original and restored buildings, and costumed volunteers. At the museum you can learn how to pan for gold, and you can buy a gold pan there as well. Bekeart's Gun Shop, located in the Park, offers similar activities and old-fashioned trade goods.

Other Park activities include video presentations in the museum and sawmill demonstrations at the working replica of the original Sutter's Mill (pictured below). With a map from the museum you can guide yourself on tours of the town, the cemetery, the Monument Trail, and the Monroe Ridge Trail.






 




 

Volcano, CA.

Volcano, CA is an old California Mining Town in the Motherlode section of the Sierra foothills located on Ram's Horn Grade Rd.

Map to Volcano, California

Karen and I saw this town on an Episode of "California's Gold" with the legend Huell Howser. Since it was so close to the cabin where we stay in Railroad Flats we had to visit. We took off early in the morning and headed North to beautiful Hwy 88. We arrived in town about 10:30 or so on a Sunday, the town was very quiet. We strolled around looking at the historic buildings and monuments.

The town is named for its setting in a bowl-shaped valley which early miners thought was caused by a volcano. The area was first known designated by Colonel Stevenson's men, who mined Soldiers Gulch in 1849. In 1851 a post office was established and by April 1852 there were 300 houses.

Hydraulic mining operations, begun in 1855

Volcano's gold served the Union and the Volcano Blues, a federal unit, smuggled the cannon "Old Abe" to intimidate rebel sympathizers to insure that was the case. The cannon was cast by Cyrus Alger & Co. in Boston in 1837 and is the first of two 6-pounders made on the same day to be stamped with serial number 4. The cannon was never fired during the war. The other cannon still survives at Shiloh Battlefield and is called "Shiloh Sam". Abe is the only cannon of that age in the U.S. still on a nineteenth century wooden carriage. The gun was fired for Fourth of July celebrations for many years but now rests in a dusty garage in town.

The historic St George Hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel is a center piece in the quaint village of Volcano, California, the gem of the Motherlode.

The first two hotels that stood on this site, Eureka (1853), Empire (1859) were destroyed by fire. The current Hotel was built in 1862. It is a 3-story brick building with 14-inch thick walls to make it more fireproof than the 2 previous structures. The Hotel was built by B.F. George and named the St. George to “thwart the demonic Fire Dragon”. The Hotel was known in the late 1800’s as the best Hotel in the County.
The main structure has 12 guestrooms on two floors, 10 with shared bathrooms.and two ( Jimtown and Dogtown ) with private bathrooms. The slight slant in the floors add to the character of the beautiful old building. The main floor of the Hotel has three sections. The charming Parlor, with 10-foot ceilings and a grand fireplace; The dining room, home to some of the finest food in the County; The Whiskey Flat Saloon was added to the main structure in the 1930’s. It is a fun and unique place to have a drink and meet the locals.

The Clute Building was also built in 1855 by the brothers Frye. John, George, and Reuben Frye arrived in Volcano during the early 1850's, and by 1855 had done quite well for themselves. Their income came from mining, and selling water from their ditch to the miners working the placers in Soldiers Gulch. They also speculated in real estate, owning several pieces of property on Main Street, upon which they erected buildings to meet the growing demand for stores. Standing on the west side of Main Street, with Soldiers Gulch behind, this building was constructed on two lots, each twenty feet wide by sixty feet deep. From the outside, the building appeared to be a single store; actually it was two, divided down the middle by a common wall. When the building was finished, the brothers sold the north lot and north half of the building on it to E. M. Strange in November of 1855. Four days later, they sold the south lot and south half of the building to John LaRoy and James A. Robbins. LaRoy and Robbins sold out the following year to Charles Crocker (later one of the Big Four), who sold it to Franklin W. Clute in August of that same year. Franklin ran a general merchandise store here, later selling out to his brother Peter. All in all, the Clutes operated from this site for nearly four decades, from 1856 to 1905, with the two buildings trading hands several times between different parties, at one time being repurchased by the Frye brothers. The structure eventually came into the possession of the Volcano Pioneers community theatre group who reinforced and converted the building into their new theatre.