Listening: Thirteenth Step, A Perfect Circle
A Sorta Fairytale single, Tori Amos
Real Women Have Curves soundtrack
Underworld soundtrack
Spirit of the Century, The Blind Boys of Alabama
Mentally Replaying: the whole last week
I'd rather be: Back in Angel's Camp
Desiring: A way to take each and every one of you back there, personally.
Enjoying: memories...

Aside No 1: Over a year ago I made a folder on a public drive at work for my completed assignments. Only *TODAY* did I notice I misspelled the name. Gah. Thank God the salespeople are too stupid to go into the folders and look up my shit after the fact.

Aside No 2: Suddenly I thought of the appropriate title for this entry but I used it only a few weeks ago. "Made a Friend of the Western Sky" would look stupid twice on the same calendar page and I don't know what terrible thing it would be to try and rename the other entry. Ah well.

To Begin:
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The drive from Los Angeles to Stockton is long and not particularly enjoyable. Fortunately, it ceased to be arduous with the creation of Interstate 5. There isn't much to see for most of the haul, fields of windblown weeds and grasses and the occasional group of cattle munching or generally standing around not being very interesting. In September the insects come out thick at dusk and flit lazily in the warm air over the lanes of the 5, often to become tiny bits of juice on a passing car's grill or front windshield.

Stockton is itself a small city between Fresno and Sacramento. Not worth enough notice to warrant an entry in tourbooks of the area and thus your correspondent has nothing to say about it. However, Stockton is the point at which one changes from the 5 freeway to to Hwy 4. The 4 is a tiny two lane country road the main use of which is for the drive between Stockton and Angel's Camp. In Angel's Camp it intersects Hwy 49 which runs the length of Gold Country, from Nevada City and Downieville in the north and Mariposa and Oakhurst in the south.

Most of the 49 is situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and as such the climate in Mid-September is rather warm without the extreme heat of the Central Valley. Most of the villages along the 49 have populations in the low hundreds. The Mother Lode is mostly in El Dorado County, the seat of which is Placerville. It is heavily developed and with a population over 8000 it is more then 10 times bigger and busier than any of the actual towns in the Mother Lode trail.

The surrounding countryside, which can be best enjoyed driving along the 4, is nothing short of breathtaking. The gentle hills are coated smoothly in tall grass the color of which is reminiscent of the ore that made the area so famous. Cattle and horses in separate clumps wander the luxurious land and grow fat on the golden bounty and ready streams of water. The ground is nothing like the flat, shapeless Central Valley and for many miles the 4 throws itself about in sharp turns and sudden dips leaving drivers and passengers alike harried and with a quickened pulse. Throughout the country low trees dot the landscape, where there are any groups there are certain to be many cows as well. Where the land happens to be flat for any good stretch the land is put to use bearing strawberries, grapes, walnuts, apples and apricots among others.

The 4 is the main east-west artery in this particular region as it's the main road from Angel's Camp to the 205/5 junction that one needs in order to get to San Francisco. From then the drive becomes a little more boring. The hills are drier, higher and covered with sage and other brush. Occasionally the sloped fields have windmills that catch the wind and use its force to create power.

San Francisco is a small city, when you get right down to it. Roughly seven miles across and 12 miles north to south, it sports about three-quarters of a million people. It was born for sightseeing and it doesn't disappoint. The length of the Embarcadero is not only picturesque, it is nearly lined with street entertainers, trinket hawkers and vendors of different foodstuffs from lowly hotdogs to gellatos and espressos. The wharfs have companies competing to take you on bay cruises, city tours and occasionally on early morning fishing trips. Despite a day and a half in the city one cannot fit in everything one might desire. Not even a quick skim of everything, once the 2.75 hour drive to and from Angel's Camp is factored in. So San Francisco is worth the drive if one has specific things to do (say to meet friends for dinner), but otherwise this journaler recommends staying within one hour to 1.5 hours of where one is sleeping. But hey, Alcatraz is fairly cool if you've never been.

Closer to the lodgings in Angel's Camp are many historic sites of events and living quarters of people who led far more exciting lives than you or I (for the most part). If you are trying to recall why the name Angel's Camp sounds familiar to you it is very simple. Angel's Camp was once the seat of Calaveras County and not only was the chosen base of operations for Bret Harte when he wrote Gold Rush (and likely served as a model for The Luck of Roaring Camp), it is said that one Samuel L Clemens wrote the notes for "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" at the local tavern. The story was eventually published under the pseudonym "Mark Twain" and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today the town has a restored main drag which is about 500 feet along Hwy 49. And yes, every third weekend in May folks from all around the world bring their frogs to see which will jump the farthest. The remains of Mark Twain's cabin lie about a dozen miles south of town.

Hwy 49 hugs the Sierras and so it is a bit of a treacherous, windy road with a great many stretches running through a flurry of isolated hairpin curves and switchbacks. The foliage is more dense at this altitude and has much more water to draw from. To the north lie the towns along the Mother Lode: San Andreas, Jackson, Sutter Creek, Placerville and finally Coloma. Coloma is on the verge of becoming a ghost town. The only thing that keeps it in operation is the Department of Historic Sites' determined preservation of some of the orginal buildings that sprang up around Sutter's Mill after gold was discovered on the banks of the American River. The mill itself burned down long ago as did many of the buildings. In fact so many of the buildings burned down so repeatedly the historians gave up in many cases and placed signs over sites where once buildings stood to house miner, families and/or shops. The mill, of course, has been rebuilt, though the water is no longer routed to power it (indeed if it ever was).

The towns that aren't showing off a preserved downtown do end up putting a face forward that mirrors that of small town America. The self-sufficiency is at once indicative of the the remoteness of the area but the friendly faces also show the desire to welcome outsiders. Though the talk does get a little strained at mention of the influx of rich city folk snapping up prime real estate for their second or third winter home, not a few locals show some smugness at how dramatically their homes have increased in value. Of course those that rent speak warily of this trend that is clearly just beginning. Those that own and run shops in the small towns understand that tourism is their bread and butter and they are proud that their home area is a place so many sofisticates desire.

Then again, finding an Internet cafe is a bitch and a half.

South of Angel's Camp is Tuolumne County. The 49 bypasses Columbia, which may or may not be a good thing (more later). It heads through Sonora, the "Gem of the southern Mother Lode" and seat of Tuolumne County, through Jamestown, Chinese Camp and finally Mariposa. While Chinese Camp has a fascinating history - in 1856 it was the site of a very bloody Tong war - this journaller did not have the time to visit. Sonora is a very large town, second only to Placerville among towns along the 49. For this reason it has been also heavily industrialized and its sense of history has become fogged.

Columbia, on the other hand, has the best preserved gold mining town of the entire Mother Lode. The buildings have been almost completely reconstructed (after having burned down a myriad of times, and seeing the necessety of indoor plumbing and and electrical wiring) and are hopefully now more robust than a century or more ago. The entire area has been designated Columbia State Historic Park and indeed cars are not allowed on the streets. The local workers dress in period costumes and there are occasional gold panning contests. If one can only spend one day getting aquainted as personally as possible with the California Gold Rush, one can do far worse than to visit this human park.

East of Angel's Camp the 4 heads toward the Nevada border, but first winds its way through the town of Murphys and climbs into the Sierras. The area around Murphys has struck a new sort of gold on the strength of the local wines. One can sample the fine vintages at the likes of Zucca Mountain (a very smooth and dry Cabernet Sauvignon), the Milliaire Winery (they have an interesting and somewhat sweet Christmas Couvee), and the giant and highly respected Ironstone which boasts a tour of their fabulous grounds, wine processing machinery, storage cave and concert grounds and antique gallery, as well a museum, art and curio shop and a bank vault with the largest nugget of cyrstalline gold dug up in the last century (and likely the largest that is still in one piece. It's value is estimated to be high enough that they don't bother telling tourists. It is simply considered priceless. And by the way, their Reserve Meritage is superb, their apple wine is delicious and their Voignon(sp?) was also highly praised.

Beyond Murphys is the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. It is in the Sierra Ponderosa, occuring at altitudes between three and seven thousand feet. It is home to the largest living creatures ever found on Earth - giant sequoias. Here I must stop, dear reader, because I simply cannot conjure the words that can possibly explain the sheer majesty of the gargantuan redwoods that would ever do justice. Simply understand that not only can they top 300 feet, and easily reach diameters of over 25 feet, but that they *thrive* in fire. Fire can kill a giant sequoia, but the fire would have to be of such a size and intensity that the entire surrounding forrest would be flattened before the sequoia succumbed. Indeed there are many redwoods in the ponderosa that bear multiple scars from previous fires and persist even today. There is even a tree that has been completely hollowed out on the inside that one can lean in it and seen the sky through the top of it, and yet it still lives.

Big Trees? Hmph. More like Goddamned Big Ass-Kicking Motherfuckers Made of Wood.

You really need to see this to believe it.

Last, though not least, Sacramento is relatively close to the area. It was the last way station for would-be miners who had sailed around the Americas in search of the fortune they were certain was theirs. The sailing ships took them as far as the Bay of San Francisco and from their paddle boat took them inland through the Delta to the Sacramento River. From their they were on their own for figuring out how to get to the Mother Lode. Whether by coach or pony, or up the American River that flows from the Sierras to the Sacramento. For this reason much of the old town is on the water front. Here there are several museums including the California Military Museum which seems a little slap-dash compared to the the museums of DC, but at least it has special attention for Californian troops, and the California State Railroad Museum the exhibits of which are built around actual steam engines, and retired cars.

The town is laid out as much in a grid as possible, however there are enough one way roads to give any first time navigator a headache. But the capitol building is an image of simple Roman elegance. A few blocks past it is Sutter's Fort which, in the evening, looks like little more that four big walls of gleaming adobe.

And that, friends, concludes this section of California stories. Stay tuned for more, and please, feel free, nay encouraged, to write your own.

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Aside No3, cause it's late and I'm feeling snarky: If you don't like California, by all means, fucking leave. And don't let the Golden Door hit your ass on the way out.