Road Trip! Day 7

Gold Country! The other big theme in the 4th grade was the gold rush. The first stop was the James Marshall State Park - the spot where the first gold was discovered by, who else, James Marshall. He discovered a nugget while working in a lumber mill. We toured the park and museum before moving on to Sutter Creek Gold Mine. We began by panning for gold. Then we went underground into the mine. Very cool.

From there we traveled to the Black Chasm Cavern. This is a vertical cavern that not only has great stalactites and stalagmites but it also has rare helictite crystals, for which Black Chasm is famous. These crystals appear in only 5% of the caves in the US and this has the largest population of these crystals. Basically what happens is the water calcifies inside the rock and is pushed out forming these asymmetrical forms.

We pushed on to our B&B in Jackson. A wonderful Victorian Mansion in which we were the only guests in the house. One other couple were in the guest house. They directed us to a local restaurant in a brand new Tuscan Villa. Absolutely gorgeous and the food was pretty good.

Tomorrow, we are off to Yosemite.