Placerville RV Resort day 2

Another great day visiting with Rick and Chris. We drove into Folsom in their Tesla and had lunch. The Tesla appears to be a video game that you can drive. Pretty cool. Placerville was the center of the California gold rush, in fact, just a few miles from here is Sutters Mill, where gold was first discovered. That discovery was the the start of the invasion of California by the 49ers. Tomorrow we move south to Pinnacles National Park. Our route will take us back through Sacramento in order to get us back on interstate 5. It wasn't fun the first time. We will leave a little later to avoid the morning rush. 

Placerville RV Resort

We made it here unscathed. The drive through Sacramento was a white knuckle adventure. Our friends Rick and Chris Arkus served us a absolutely gourmet meal on their back patio. The Chicken was melt in your mouth tender. It was California, free range, organic, fed baby formula and gently massaged daily by specially 

 trained chicken masseuses. Yum. Thanks for the great meal.

Lassen Volcanic day 3

I didn't mention this yesterday but this park burned in 2021. The second largest fire in California history (The Dixie Fire) burned 963,000 acres, 74,000 of them in this park. 69% of the park burned. Miles and miles of blackened dead pine trees. We hiked today through the burn to see a waterfall. Not ideal but the burn scar is everywhere and is hard to avoid. We move tomorrow to a commercial campground near Folsom to visit with some expats from Habersham. I'm hoping they have beer.

Shingletown KOA

I'm going to start off with yesterday's fiasco. Since we no longer can use a bike rack, we have to put Jenny's unrideable bike in the car and my bike in the MP when we're moving. I took off the front wheel of both bikes to facilitate getting them loaded. When I walked out to start breaking camp my bike was gone. Some asshole stole it, without a front tire. I filled out police report but it's gone. Ok, that cost us an hour or so. The car brake is acting weird when we hook it up to the tow brake. We needed a sabaru dealer. We found one, somewhat out of the way, and they didn't believe it was possible to flat tow a Sabaru. No one had ever heard of such a thing. No can do. Long story short, they looked at the car and determined I was insane. We are now towing the car without a brake in the car. Totally illegal. Subject change: We are here to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park. We did that today. 2 excellent hikes. There is a thermal area here, kinda like Yellowstone except it only covers 25 acres. I'll post some pics. More tomorrow.

Mystic Forest day 4

Today we did 7 miles of hiking through a primeval forest. It was like Jurassic Park or some alien planet on Star Wars. In fact one of the Star Wars movies had a scene filmed in one of the groves here. The trail was somewhat gnarly. We were completely alone having our own adventure. A fantastic hike. I'd put that hike in my top 10. Tomorrow we move to a KOA near Lassen Volcanic National Park. We will be there for 3 days. I have no idea if we will have cell. A bit of trivia: The largest conifer tree on earth has the smallest pine cone. Big things sometimes come in small packages.

Mystic Forest day 3

Today we did the big trees. We drove a little south and hiked into Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Surreal! Some of those trees are taller than a football field is long. It was a spiritual experience to walk among those giants. Only 4% of the original old growth Redwoods remain. The rest were logged. 7000 acres of clear cut is now protected and in 200 years it will start to recover.