Last week after visiting my son Jon in San Luis Obispo, I headed up to Pollock Pines to visit Tom and Judy. It was quite the experience. Cloudy and gray most of the time. Plus with all the recent flooding, there were landslides, swollen rivers, sinkholes, dams threatening to burst, and the saddest was seeing houses in water halfway up their sides, trees drowning, and lots of standing water where there had not been any before. We took a trip up to my nephews house and stopped at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
It is an incredible place that celebrates the discovery of gold in 1848, on the South Fork of the American River at Sutter's Mill, in the town of Coloma located in El Dorado County. Yes the grass is that green from all the recent rainfall, so green it hurt!
I love cloudy days, especially when they are the backdrop for one lone tree in the green, green grass; kind of a melancholic's dream.
This is the South Fork of the American River, swollen from rain, muddy and belligerent. It was awesome.
The ruins of the original Coloma jail are still standing in the park. Below you can see how small it is. Above you can see how the men were kept in.....heavy iron doors. The inside was so miserable and dreary that I couldn't even take a picture of it. A brutal place to be incarcerated.
Reflections in the gray water. How cool is that? I just love it.
We then took the shortest State Hwy, California 153, up the hill to the monument.
The monument to James Marshall, the man who first discovered gold in the mill he shared with his buddy John Sutter. Once the gold was discovered, the lumber mill was abandoned and everybody and his brother began panning for gold. The mountains behind the monument, are alive with the late afternoon golden rays of the sun... the only gold I saw at the park!
Me and my sister Judy, brother in law Tom, niece Michele with little Jade Rose and Kelly with Carson and Olivia. Great times with great people. Blessings to you all! Susan Little