Gold Country Gold

Last week my husband and I packed up the motorhome and just left town. I’d finished my latest manuscript, HellFire, the second book in The DemonSlayers series, and while it was with my beta readers we were free to take off. We figured we’d missed the fall colors in the Sierras because of the big rain storm a week earlier, but the idea of being away from cell phones and Internet had a huge appeal to both of us.

Anyway, we headed down our mountain, across the valley, through Sacramento and up along Highway 49 through the gold country. And, lo and
behold, the trees were ablaze with color. We hadn’t missed it at all. We camped the first night on the Yuba River not far from the little town of
Downieville, and spent a couple of hours gold panning and hiking along the river where gold miners found and lost fortunes over a hundred and fifty years ago.

We didn’t find any gold, but it was still fun to swirl the sand in our pans and see the black sand in a dark sweep at the bottom. (and besides, I think my bearded spouse is beginning to look the part!) Black sand is heavier, though not as heavy as gold, and if you’re going to find any flakes they’re generally glistening amid all those dark grains of sand.

We used to go gold panning when the kids were little and always found at least a little bit of color, but I think, at the end of the season after tourists
have been panning all summer, it’s going to take a few heavy rains to wash more gold down to the level where we were digging. No matter—it was a lot of fun and we both had an absolute ball.

We slept like the dead that night and headed out early. A few miles up the road, a black bear crossed in front of us. I tried to get a picture. I wasn’t quite fast enough, but it was the first
bear either of us has seen in the wild in about thirty years. The last one was in Yosemite, hanging upside down from an apple tree, gorging himself on fruit as the tour bus we were in slowed up for a look. He was definitely not as wild as the bear we saw this trip.

We stopped in Sierra City at the Red Moose Inn and I had the best breakfast I’ve had in ages. The place was filled with locals and sitting there eavesdropping on all the conversations was such a hoot! We looked at the real estate ads in the local paper and we were ready to buy a place right
NOW! (Until sanity prevailed...) It’s so gorgeous up there, and the history fascinates me. We both grew up with weekend trips to the Sierras, and the gold country holds a mystique all its own.

We camped our second night at a place called Grass Lake on the Gold Lake Highway above the town of Graeagle, and then it was time to head back home again.

Anyway, I wanted to share some of my pictures of fall colors with you. I’ve got more of them on my Facebook page if you’re interested. Granted, we don’t get the brilliant reds here in California that those of you in the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest see, but there’s still a special glory in the beautiful shades of gold in our California Gold Country.

I got home to the reports back from my beta readers, none of whom liked the way I ended my book...so I’m rewriting the ending to get that “ahhhhhh” feeling we romance readers deserve, but I’m so thankful for that little bit of magic and all the colors of fall.