The Last of Summer 2024 (10/30/24)

 Our final area for exploring this summer is Nevada City, California, a historic mining town. Paul has wanted to visit here, so it was a good chance to knock it off our bucket list.

We spent one day visiting Empire Mine State Historic Park. The Empire mine was one of the richest gold mines in California, and was in operation for over 100 years, shutting down in 1956. In 1975 the mine property was bought by the state of California, and turned into a state park.

During it’s heyday, a special room was constructed, called the “Secret Room”.  Appropriately, not many people knew about the room while the mine was in operation. In it was a 3D model of the underground workings of the mine, which covered more than 5 square miles.

 

It’s very difficult to get a picture that captures the intricacies of the model, but it was very interesting to learn that visitors who tour the mine nowadays only descend one inch down on the model, and each inch represents 80 ft. Everything below the 2 inch mark is under water now.

This area favored hydraulic mining, where a high pressure cannon essentially spewed water at huge banks of gravel, breaking it apart so the gold could be more easily separated from the rock. Unfortunately this created a huge debris field that traveled downstream, clogging rivers and streams and changing the path of the water. Farms suffered to the point that lawsuits were filed, and essentially a cease and desist order was given by the courts, mostly ending hydraulic mining.

The other park we explored while in the area was Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. Like many mining towns, during the gold rush, there were many buildings here, including 8 saloons, two churches, a school, and daily stage coach service. Like the Empire mine, the debris created by mining in this area caused the shut down of hydraulic mining.

Once we left Nevada City, we worked our way south through California, stopping several times along the way. One of the stops was Sacramento, where we attended Paul’s 50th high school reunion, and met up with his friend Robin and his partner Kim, and had a great time celebrating.

Robin and Paul were Eagle Scouts together back when they were teens. (More on Kim and Robin in a future post).

Leaving Sacramento we headed through the Fresno area, meeting up with Paul’s fraternity brothers, as usual.

Our final stop for visiting was Los Angeles, where we spent a day or so with our daughter before moving on. She is getting married in March of 2025 so, I have been shopping for “outfits” all along the western coast.

Once we got back to Lake Havasu, we had very little time to relax before preparing for our next adventure.

40 Years and some projects (10-19-14)

Paul’s 40th high school reunion took place while we were in Fresno.  His high school is in Sacramento, so we packed up neither the camper, nor the trailer, and drove the 140 miles north for the reunion.

Although none of his close friends attended, we still had a great time talking with people and looking at old pictures. After dinner they did the usual lining up of graduates for a more “formal” picture.






After a nice night of dancing, we headed to a hotel suite that is larger than our home. 

  Sunday morning we took a stroll through Old Sacramento. Along the side streets that were line with old buildings, we came across a sight that, at first glance, seemed very strange.  A dozen young ladies posing in doorways and assorted other places.

It turned out to be a photo shoot.  It wasn’t for anything specific- it was a mutually beneficial outing for young models and budding photographers.

And then …..we wandered into the largest and most colorful candy store I have ever seen!  I was in heaven and Paul had to drag me out of there- especially since the owner told us we could sample any candy that has a blue tag- and that was about a third of the store!  Yummy!



On our way out of town we drove by the house Paul grew up in.  He was happy to see that the two Redwoods he planted when he was young are the tallest trees in the area. 







Back in Fresno, the celebrating continued with the birthday party for our friend Kevin.  Kevin turned the big 6-0, but we don’t tease him because we are right behind him (some of us are closer than others though!).








We are wrapping up some of our projects on all of our rigs.  Two of them required Paul to climb under vehicles. The camper project was a planned one.  He was changing out some parts to the water system.

The truck project was not a planned one and was a little spooky.  The truck wouldn’t start one morning- it turned over, and then just died with no notice, and a warning sign came up on the dash.  Google to the rescue, when I punched in what the warning said, the results were all about the EGT sensors in the 6.7L Ford engine. Apparently in early production vehicles, the sensors go bad and need to be replaced with an upgraded version.

Luckily we had borrowed a car for the weekend and we still had it, so after a bunch of online searching and talking back and forth with the local Ford dealer, Paul took off to the dealership to get the new part. He was not a happy camper, with thoughts of what could have happened if we had been on the back roads of Alaska when the truck died. He did contact one of the directors at Ford that he used to work for, and discussed it with him.  Apparently they are aware of it and working on a solution.

One of our chores was to clean the carpets in the camper, but the carpet cleaner that we borrowed stopped working.  Karen and I relaxed with a glass of wine while Paul and Kirk pull it apart- to no avail.  It’s next stop was the dumpster.

Paul’s biggest project of the week has been a long time in coming.  The toolbox we have in the bed of the truck is enormous and at times it interferes with maneuvering the trailer in tight corners.

Paul decided it was time for a new one, but he couldn’t find exactly the size he wanted, so he bought one, and then modified it.

The new one doesn't sit as far over the top of the bed rail as the old one, giving us  much better turning abilities.  Unfortunately, it also doesn't go all the way down to the bed of the truck, and that’s a problem.  We need it deeper, to fit the boat engine.

So he cut the top part off and bought another piece of diamond plate.

He sleeved the new piece into the existing toolbox, and after some riveting and gluing….

Voila!  A custom made toolbox!