Provo, Utah to Placerville, CA

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THE BASICS
It is ironic that I ended the last blog by saying that we enjoy being able to alter our plans and stay extra days when we want to. Well...we woke up last Saturday morning and decided to change our whole route. John was very reluctant to head to the Utah parks when it was so hot, and the fire danger was rated very high. So we decided to go to California now, and then head back through Utah in a few weeks when we expect it to be cooler.
We chose to drive across US Route 50 through Nevada, labeled "The Loneliest Road in America" by Life magazine a few decades ago. It was a neat experience. We stopped two nights along the way, and arrived in Carson City, NV on Monday. From there we visited Virginia City and the northern end of Lake Tahoe.
Then, across the Sierra Nevada to Placerville, CA, in the midst of the gold discovery country.

THE FLUFF
When you're not sure you will visit an area again, you try to do the best job you can when you do visit it. Our "presearch" on California has consumed quite a bit of energy reading guides and maps in the past week. And still the most important advice comes from people. We were warned away from two major routes we had planned on, by the manager of the Carson City RV park. We drove on one in the car, and boy, was he right! I sometimes wonder if Californians can build straight roads! But the ones that follow the old pioneer trails tend to be zigzaggy, to say the least, with steep ups and downs as well.
The culture shock traveling from Utah to Nevada is jolting. About 2/3 of Utahns are Mormons, and they are generally prim and hard-working. As soon as you cross into Nevada, there are casinos virtually everywhere. I generally like to "blow" $10 at slot machines once on a trip, but the overwhelming, unfamiliar odor of cigarette smoke put me off entirely.
The photos of Route 50 show a flat road that stretches to the horizon in either direction. Not quite. The guides do not emphasize that you wind up and down through about a dozen significantly high mountain passes as you traverse the state. We stopped and got our Route 50 Passport stamped in each of the five towns along the route (a fun tourist gimmick) and look forward to getting our official certificate of accomplishment. The road was not empty, but the traffic was sparse, which made for a fairly pleasant trip. We both have grown to enjoy the wide, rolling expanses with little growing other than tumbleweeds. John especially craned his neck (i.e. didn't watch the road...) when we passed several huge patches of white on the terrain: former lakes that had lost their water and were only salt.
During our stop the second night, in Fallon, we camped in a casino parking lot (there were electric and water hookups, and the price was about half the usual). When we stepped outside the RV, the visibility was suddenly almost zero. We worried about fires, but fortunately did not smell smoke. It was a dust storm, not an unusual occurrence there, but not a really pleasant one either.
Along Route 50, one of the highlights is the Shoe Tree. A large cottonwood is covered with, mostly, sneakers that folks have hurled into the branches. There are empty shotgun casings all over the ground from shoe-target practice.
As you approach Carson City, you come face-to-face with really tall mountains, the Sierra Nevada. They are steep and it is startling to realize that the lure of gold impelled so many people across them. We visited a small town south of Carson City, Genoa, which was actually the first town in Nevada. To the east, there is a broad, fairly flat plain. Within yards of the town, the mountains soar. It's as dramatic as the Tetons, and I wonder why the Tetons are so magic when these are merely awesome. But they are.
In Genoa, we learned about "Snowshoe" Thompson, who for ten years delivered mail from Placerville, CA to Genoa, NV twice a month during the winter, up and over the steep mountains. After traveling virtually that same route in a big comfortable RV, that trip becomes even more awesome. Thompson had immigrated from Norway, so he knew something about skiing. That trip is about a hundred miles!!! And the elevation gain is about a mile!!! We learned that he did the trip in three days, or two on the return, without the heavy mail bag. And there are actually two high passes to cross - people neglected to mention that it was not just the climb to Lake Tahoe, but another pass loomed; for the first time, we really smelled the rubber of our straining brakes heading down from the second pass.
In fact, people out here must be a bit insane about mountains. Or gold and silver fever are overwhelming - like the fever that grips the casino visitors?! The ride up to Virginia City entails a 12% grade, which is pretty steep. Much of the timber from the Tahoe region had been harvested to prop up the mines, and it had to go down and then up again to get to the Comstock Lode in Virginia City. The city is built on such a steep slope that the "next" street is three stories above the one below it. The whole of Virginia City is a National Historic Landmark. Bars and saloons, the reliefs from the very hard work of mining. And I will report that I resisted purchasing one of the gaudy chemises on sale throughout the town, the kind that had been worn by a certain type of woman.
We attempted to visit some museums in Carson City, but they are closed on Tuesdays to save money in the state budget. Downtown Carson City is more like Concord NH than Salt Lake City - comfortable and oldish.
We barely knew it when we entered California. There is one small sign in South Lake Tahoe that says Welcome to California. We could, though, tell by the abrupt change in the buildings - in the Nevada half of town there are high rises and casinos and more casinos. In the California half, the lodgings are much more sophisticated and the tone is posher.
We stayed in Placerville for two nights. "Placer", by the way, is pronounced with a short a, not a long one, because it refers to placer mining. Not far north of town is the John Marshall State Historic Park, where he spotted a gold nugget while supervising construction of a sawmill and started the whole gold rush. And at first, they did placer mining, just panning. As often on this trip, we encountered very enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers of around our age.
When placer mining got used up, they started digging below the earth, and that was the culture we found at Sutters Creek, quite a few miles south of Placerville. John and I think we have seen enough about mining to last us for quite awhile! Driving back to town, John took us on a "scenic" (his idea of a drive exploring somewhere unfamiliar) through wine producing country. One vineyard and tasting opportunity after another, and often it looked more like Italy or France than the good old U.S. A beautiful drive.
Placerville is a lively town. John especially enjoyed browsing in the oldest continually operating hardware store west of the Mississippi.
We seem to be in for a spell of quite hot weather, so we might take it easy for awhile - pretend we are laid-back California types.

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