Central California, 10-19-08

One of the many switch back curves on Hwy 49.
Notice the intense concentration and this curve.
One more of the nasty curves.
One more, I know, I know.
We didn't have to go over that bridge, but we do turn onto the road in the bottom.

This is a picture of the American River near Sutter's Mill where GOLD was first discovered in California.
This is the American River directly behind our campsite. It's on a weekend when they increased the water flow.
Just upstream of our campsite.
More of Hwy 49, that is the American River down there and we are headed in that direction.
Replica of some of the gold nuggets found in the American River during the gold rush in 1849. The largest ones are over 5 pounds. Now if there were still some of them in the river, I might have tried gold panning, cold or no.

Saturday, October 19, 2008
Lorraine's Report

It’s hard to believe another week has passed. We’ve gone from “Bright Lights, Big City” to choose between 30 amp, water & sewer or 50 amp & water- no sewer; and spotty TV reception, no cellphones and no e-mail. We are out of range for the later two. In other words, we moved from Reno to Lotus, CA-a Thousand Trails/Naco West RV Park. We came in here on Tuesday afternoon and searched for almost two hours, moving twice, trying to find a good spot. Boy, am I ever glad we didn’t have to pay for our Thousand Trails/Naco membership. For what they want for membership and the number of members, you would think they would try and update/fix up some of their parks.

This park, Ponderosa RV Park, is on the South Fork of the American River. It is a much sought after park, and during the prime season, full all the time. To get here we came down CA 49. Now no one told us what a terrible “S” curvy road this was, in fact, this is the way our GPS sent us. I don’t get scared too often, but this road scared me to death. This is not a good road to take a 40 foot motor home and a toad car down. You could meet yourself coming and going, and the traffic was heavy and speedy.

And if coming down it once wasn’t enough, we drove our car back up it Friday to go to Grass Valley, where our friends, Mike & Linda live. They are in NM, so we didn’t get to visit with them. Chuck tried to find another way to drive home, but we ended up having to drive back down it; I ended up car sick all night from that awful road.

We stayed an extra day (Monday) in Reno so I could do laundry. Since we have no sewer hookups here, I’ve been taking navy showers, and Chuck is showering up at the men’s bathroom.

We went into Placerville on Wednesday to get groceries and an antenna so we could get the internet. I also got my flu shot at Safeway; with my health history, I’m suppose to get a flu shot every year. I arrived at the pharmacy just as the pharmacist was leaving for lunch. He told me to come back an hour and a half later. I told him that this was the third Safeway I’d been to for my flu shot, so he said he would give me one an hour later. It cost $30, but our insurance paid $5.00 of the cost. Thursday, while here, Chuck washed the entire motor home again I cleaned out our closet and got a big bag of stuff to donate.

Friday, I also started my Christmas wrapping. I’m hoping to stash the stuff I’ve wrapped at our daughter, Susy’s, home in Sunnyvale, CA. That way I won’t have so much to do and can spend quality time with her and our Grand daughter, Kaitlyn, next week when we get there.

When I finished my chores, Chuck suggested we take a drive and see some more of this area. That’s when we drove to Grass Valley as I said before, and then we headed west and found a new casino, east of Sacramento, about 29 miles away. We played for a few minutes, no luck, but it was Crab night at the buffet. Was it ever a great buffet. The place was very crowded, very noisy and very busy.

Saturday, Chuck said we should see some more of the area so we took off to the left. We went into Placerville, this time a different way, where they were having an art and wine festival from 5 pm to 10 pm Saturday night. We went into Cameron, and I tried calling Sandy H in Minnesota, since I missed calling her on her birthday on October 12. Happy belated Birthday Sandy. Hope it was a happy day for you.

In all fairness, this area is really pretty, the weather has been warm, especially after the snow and cold in Reno. The trees are really pretty, though not as much color as I expected. They let water out of the reservoir on Saturday, so the river is running higher and is very calming to listen to.

On Monday I think we will be leaving here and heading farther west. So till next time-see you down the road…Lorraine

10/19/08
Chuck's report

Hi to all that are following along. As I've said earlier, we lead a pretty boring, sedate life. Not much to write about but will attempt to add some pictures again.

We left Reno on Tuesday, headed West. Reno was nice but we didn't do a whole lot other than go to the casinos, never did find that Bar-B-Que place we were looking for last week. Oh well, I know we will get some good Bar-B-Que in Arizona this winter.

We headed out of Reno on I-80, the road is much better than in the past years but still needs more work. In places I moved into the passing lane, it was just too rough in the right hand lane. We were headed to a 1000 Trails park, Ponderosa Resort in Lotus, California. Both GPSs had us going on the same route, I-80 West to California Hwy 49 then South about 14 miles.

OK, both say the same thing, let's go! Once we got on Hwy 49 we found out it was a narrow two lane road with lots of places where the turns are tight, 20 MPH. The first ~ 6 miles had some severe curves and switchbacks, I swear I could see the license plate on our tow car in a couple of places. Finally, just after passing through a town called Cool, the road returned to a more normal 40 MPH. This is probably the worse RV un-friendly road we have traveled on in the past year.

Of course, to add to the trip, we missed the turn into the campground. We had to turn around in a pasture, couldn't see it had deep holes and a pretty steep drop off until we turned into it. Remember, we can't back up the motorhome with the car attached well, just go slow and turn the wheel hard, we made it. Back on the road and make it to the campground to check in.

The ranger at the gate found our paperwork and proceeded to check us in. I mentioned how the road into here was pretty bad. He asked which way we came in, I said from Auburn on hwy 49. He said nobody takes their RV, especially ones as large as ours, on that hwy. Boy, thanks for that information about an hour too late. (I did check their web page and it states they recommend not driving on hwy 49, wish I had caught that before!). There aren't any road signs either that would warn anyone about the bad road ahead other than something about maximum length on a truck hitch or something like that. I think they need to put up a big warning sign with flashing lights. That was a real hair raising experience that I don't care to do again anytime soon.

The campground is nice, can get either 50 amp without sewer or 30 amp with sewer. We picked a spot right on the American River with 50 amp, no cell or Internet access. Have seen some large white tail deer and some wild turkeys, no sign of fish in the river, however. Not many people here until Friday then the place filled up with locals. Seems this is a very popular campground, fills up almost every weekend. It should start to empty out late this morning, I bet.

The weather here is nice, in the 80s during the afternoon, drops to the 40s at night. Even next to the river, we haven't had any bugs bothering us so we can sit outside. I stopped by a store and bought a trucker's antenna that hooked up to our air card, allowed us Internet access.

On Friday we decided to tour the area a little bit. One couple (Mike and Linda) that we met in Quartzsite and spent some time in Yuma with, live just up the way in Grass Valley. Knowing we were going to be in the area, I sent them an e-mail last week. Bummer, they are in Albuquerque for the balloon festival and we didn't get a chance to meet up with them. Mike had mentioned how nice the town was so we decided to check it out, The town does seems pretty nice, has a neat historic downtown and the houses are interesting to look at. It is in the area of the California gold rush and some of the names show that.

Lorraine checked the GPS for a good spot for dinner, she found a good sized Indian Casino (boy, they are all over the country) close by. We decided to check it out for food, found they had a seafood buffet and we got $5.00 off each for signing up for their player's card. A good dinner and, as we had just been in Reno, we didn't spend much time on the slots. We also got a chance to enter a contest for the NFL games today, they give away some $50 prizes with a (very remote) chance to win a million, ya right. But it doesn't cost anything and the way the market has been, that would be a nice thing to happen.

Saturday found us in the exploring mood again. We wanted to check out some of the small towns around here.

Unknown to me, about ¾ of a mile South of where we are staying is where GOLD was discovered in the American River. Yes that's right, Sutter's Mill, the one that started the California gold rush in 1849. They have a little museum there that is interesting and a few old building and such. It's the same river we are camped on, the water is cold even in these warm temperatures. No, we didn't try panning for gold in the river, the water is way too cold and they open the upstream reservoir to allow more water flow on the weekends.

We also checked out the small towns of Placerville, Shingle Springs and Cameron Park. Lots of tourist trap stuff but some old history that was fun to see. There was an Art and Wine Festival on Saturday night but we didn't stay, the town was crowded by early afternoon and I don't like crowds if they can be avoided.

So, that brings us up-to-date for another week. As before, keep the shiny side up - - -

'till next time Chuck