Being tourists...

Some of the best things come out of not well thought out plans. Last Friday I was going to take the kids up with my step sister, Kelly to Daffodil Hill. I got up Friday morning and got on the computer to make sure I had the directions to get there. Thank goodness I did, because we would have made a long drive for no reason. Apparently, all of said daffodils were dead. There was a late season snow storm a few days before and sent all the pretty flowers back underground. :( We decided to drive to Kelly's anyway. I knew we'd figure out something to do. We hemmed and hawed a little and finally decided to go hang out in Coloma for the day. Coloma is my old hometown. Coloma is the place where James Marshall discovered a big ol chunk of gold while working at the saw mill in 1848 which triggered the California Gold Rush of 1849. Living about 3 miles from this place, I learned A LOT about the gold rush growing up.
Anyway, though I'd been to the park many, many times before, I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I did with my kids last Friday. When we were teenagers we used to go down to the park to watch the rafters come down the American River and see if they'd make it out of Satan's Cesspool. Or watch our idiot friends jump off the bridge. There was no way I'd ever do that! But it had been a long time since I'd actually played tourist in my own hometown.
It was a much better idea to go to Coloma than it ever would have been to see some silly flowers. Why didn't I think about it before? Jake absolutely loved it. We were lucky enough to be there on a day when they had people working the park in period (1850's) attire and were able to answer questions about being pioneers and miners. The first place we stopped was Brekart's store where I paid 7 dollars for Jake to pan for gold. Seriously, we could have spent the entire day doing just this. He, lover of all treasures, was fascinated and completely entertained.


After about 45 minutes of this we finally convinced him to go look at something else! We walked through all the buildings, went to the small museum, walked along the gold discovery trail, and took lots and lots of pictures. Funny, I guess since I'd been there so many times, I didn't take any pictures of the actual things that were there, like the mill or the Chinese house or the miners cabin. Just pictures of us! LOL! And the kids were seriously posing that day. Megan is all about being a Fashonista and Jake is all about being a rock star or Elvis, or something. They are quite funny these days.
Any how...we had a great day and spent the rest of the weekend with my dad. It was so nice to actually do something on spring break besides just sit at home and wait for the week to be over.
Only 6 more weeks of school though! I can't believe it. Yet I'm glad for it. This year has been rough and i can't wait for a new start for Jake. Hoping we get a great teacher for 2nd grade.