Forest City - inhabited

Alicia and I went up the Tahoe National Forest a few weeks ago. We left early and went straight to Forest City. When we got there I was all grumbly because people were there. There was a young guy that rode in on his motorcycle and there was a family playing ball in the road and there was a piano on a truck and people were hanging out in the Dance Hall. We walked right by them because I didn't want to share!

So, we saw the sights:This one has got to be an E Clampus Vitus joke. I hope.



And then, while I was waiting for Alicia to use the one hundred and forty year old outhouse, a kid with bright red curly hair on a bicycle rode by and said that we should check out the dance hall. So, we did and ended up meeting the guy who basically saved Forest City several times over. First the forest service wanted to burn it and he stopped them, and then some dot com mountain bikers wanted to make a resort and he stopped them. He now owns half the town. His son grew up there and was the guy on the motorcycle. The piano that was on the truck had been originally made for the dance hall and was being donated back on this very day!

The dancehall has a museum in it. The Forest City guy talked about inheriting people's houses when they died and they would be filled with super old things...like one hundred year old downhill skis!


I donated 20 dollars to the organization dedicated to preserving Forest City. Then we left because one of the guys hanging out in the dancehall started trying to tell us that there was a "naked lady at the bottom of a pool" up the street. We didn't know what he meant, nor did we want to find out.

Things and more things

I have been a bad blogger. I haven't yet posted the video of Mr. Potato head being reunited with his ear. I haven't posted pictures from Alicia and my fabulous ghosttown/ icy river adventure, nor described the steak I grilled that was not good.

Other news:
My sister is having another baby, due in September. I will be a double uncle.
I'm not going to Alaska this summer (but will next year for certain).
I gave Mark the gift of everlasting life for his birthday and it finally died.
Leggy found my new favorite artist.
Mel interviewed me for her blog and it was great!

Garbagefish and other dirty things

On the way to Rough and Ready many things happened (read more here and here about R and R, Bridgeport and French Corral). First Leggy and w.d. and I couldn't figure out how to get a camp site...and we ran into a nessie-infested yet beautiful reservoir near Dark Day Campground. Then we meandered out an around a huge dam that I didn't even know existed. My truck hung out with other trucks
and then we booked our campsite with some lady on a floating-campsite-booking-office out on the water. Said lady told us we could feed the fish.

Me: "What kind of fish are they, there's some big ones."
Lady: "Oh, those are just garbagefish....they are really loud."




Then, as if that wasn't enough, we had trouble finding firewood, we ate luke warm chili, and it rained on all of us...soaking the tent corners and dripping through the truck onto my head. Don't get me wrong though...we had a great time. The best was the Fruit Jar Pickers, Rough and Ready's one and only weekly concert. Oh yes.

I put some gratuitous ukulele from the ukefest at the end.

North Bloomfield and Malkoff Diggins

I never blogged about a major part of the the Yuba trip. So now I do. A and D both posted great photos too (way back closer to when we were actually there).

North Bloomfield is the town that supported Malakoff Diggins and giant the hydraulic mining operation in Tahoe National Forest that devastated parts of the forest. The town was a bit touristy for my taste with restored buildings housing "old" bottles and barber chairs, etc. The real treasures were down the street a ways closer to the mine site where we found a swampy mine adit as well as a crazy drainage tunnel that we were too freaked out to go more than 100 feet inside (if that).

This is a little cutesy for me. These were here during the gold rush. Yeah Right.

Dani got in trouble for not looking over the horizon correctly.

This is the type of gun that they used to blast away the mountains which decimated the wild life and trees.



A lone Manzanita of course.

This mine adit is currently filled with goopy water. When I knelt down beside it I thought that a swamp monster was going to bite me.



The drainage tunnel is constantly running and drips on your head just to scare you.

Forest City, CA - Super ghost!

After a jaunt through Downieville and a fall into Woodruff Creek we headed up to Forest City, an abandoned gold mining town. Outside the town's entrance was a sign describing a stage coach hold up / shooting. The cemetery was filled with children, as I've come to expect from ghost towns, and the town itself was amazing. Over a dozen standing structures including a dance hall, a school house, a museum...and several outhouses, one in which a bear had it's way with a roll of toilet paper. And you're probably wondering which ghosts supply the town with toilet paper? E Clampus vitus...a historical fraternal order, that left their mobile gallows next to the school house.



Also check out Dani's speedy picture delivery.

One more amazing thing about Forest City was that they had a rope swing! Two of my favorite things at one time: ghost towns, rope swings.

Return to Downieville - 18 years later

Last Weekend I went camping in Tahoe National Forest. It had been 18 years since I had been back. We didn't know exactly where we wanted to go, so before really tackling highway 49 we stopped in at the ranger station. Being a holiday weekend, and being a non-planner, I asked the ranger where we might have campsite luck. She pulled out a gigantic map of the forest and began to point. I told her I wanted to be near Downieville. As she was pointing to campsites I saw something on the map that made my heart stop. A creek called Woodruff Creek. Along the creek was a strip of private land, a mining claim, said the ranger. I told her that my name was Woodruff and that my family used to come up there every summer. I described where we used to camp and about having several claims. It turned out that she had been a ranger in that forest since '79 and worked the fire year (when my grandparents were evacuated down the mountain). I started feeling that this woman, in her fifties probably, must have known my family. Even if she didn't, it felt like it.

When I think of the "Gold Country" as we called it, I think of my cousin, my grandfather, the color of the dirt and the chill of the Yuba. I also think about sharing mini cereal boxes with Hallie and getting donuts in Downieville. I think of my mom's homemade "floatation device" and the hubbub over what each person wanted in their sandwich. I remember Mertyl and rescuing kittens in 1987.

Here are a sequence of photos that I put together from Downieville and Woodruff Creek. (the video takes away some of the photo quality).