Gold Rush

We're starting another round of campus tours, this time with J. Two years ago, he was dragged along when M was visiting the colleges he was interested in. I'm hoping J got enough of an impression of those schools last time so that we won't have to make many repeat trips. Since he doesn't have school tomorrow, J and I will be checking out UC Davis. (R was left behind to hold down the fort.)

Instead of driving up, we flew in to Sacramento this morning and spent the day playing tourist, starting out in Old Town.

But this wasn't our first time here. In 2004, we came specifically for the California State Railroad Museum because the boys were totally into trains - such a fun place! In 2009, we boarded the California Zephyr in Sacramento and spent the next 2.5 days on the train to Chicago. And in 2012, we stopped to visit the state capitol on our way to Whiskeytown NRA and Lassen Volcanic NP.

To be honest, my primary reason for stopping by the Wells Fargo Museum today was to get the Pony Express National Historic Trail passport stamp. And J didn't protest because there was a Pokémon GO event. Touristy places always have lots of Pokémon.

After lunch, we drove about 45 miles northeast to Coloma, CA and the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. In January 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the tailrace of Sutter's Mill on the American River. News of the discovery sparked the massive migration of people westward, changing the course of history for California and the nation.

Some elementary schools will take students on field trips to Sacramento when they are studying California history, but M and J never had the opportunity. I have always wanted to visit here, so this was a great way to the spend the afternoon.

Replica of the original sawmill

American River

From here, we drove down from the foothills to Davis, where we checked into our hotel. We headed downtown for dinner and ended up at Davis Noodle City, a small hole-in-wall restaurant with pretty good and reasonably priced Chinese food. Just the sort of place I'd expect to find in a campus town.

Looking forward to our tour of UC Davis tomorrow!