Day 14: Jackson CA - Gilroy CA

So, yeah, the California Gold Rush.  Once upon a time there was a Swiss chap named Johann August Sutter who emigrated to what was then Mexico.  He was a speculative philosopher who as also considered a thinker and a dreamer, and, by his wife, an idiot had planned to establish a colony to be known as New Helvetia in roughly the area around modern-day Sacramento, to which end he established a sawmill, powered by a water wheel, at Coloma on the South Fork of the American River.  In January 1848 his employee James Marshall found Shiny Things in the tail-race of the mill.  Not wishing to have his plans messed up by the arrival of thousands of uninvited visitors Sutter tried to keep the discovery a secret, which worked as well as one might expect.  By the end of that year thousands of uninvited visitors had turned up in California in general and the site of New Helvetia in particular.  Which buggered Sutter's plans to the extent that he declared bankruptcy and moved away from the area altogether.  Which probably serves him right as, if Wikinaccurate is to be believed, he was a right bastard.  Once the gold was gone Coloma became almost, but not quite, a ghost town as agriculture took over from mining as the area's economic driving force but these days it's been turned into the Marshall Gold Discovery State Park, which this Unit hereby endorses.

Replica of Sutter's sawmill, a little way up the river bank from the site of the original...

...which was approximately here.

Note to the California Parks Service: if you actually want people to pay to get in try unlocking the little tin boxes the payment envelopes live in.  That way I will not have to resort to leaving 2D Thomas holding a note explaining why I ent got a ticket.

From some of the plaques dotted around the place it can readily be seen that Lewis & Clark were not the only folks in the American West with their own esoteric variety of spelling:

And further to the matter:

dogg of the alsatian breed fetching a stick

A whole bunch more photos from said park at here: Clicky.

Prod the SatNav.  It tells me that it is 193 miles to Gilroy while the motor-car says it contains enough petril to cover 190.  Of them.  Back through a few miles of foothills and onto US-50 which in this part of the world is not America's Loneliest Road but a multi-lane freeway.  South down the Central Valley on US-99 - which is a handy alternative to the virtual I-5 in your virtual truck as there aren't any weigh stations - then across to I-5 near Stockton, I-580 and 680 to the southern edge of San Francisco Bay then south on US-101 to Gilroy.  All nicely conducive to Economickal Motoring.

On arrival the motor-car says I still have petril enow for 43 of your Earth miles.  Yay!  Go me!  Unfortunately the shortest route to SFO from here is 67 miles so I will still have to bung a gallon or two in to get it home with as little motor-spirit in it as possible.  While on the subject of the motor-car, the two switches on the centre console which I assumed to be blanks to operate something or other which in my case I have not got are nothing of the sort.  Poke them and semi-circular wossnames pop out of their little hidey-holes and turn the outsize cupholders into sensibly-sized ones.  For two weeks my water bottle has been jumping around the car every time its velocity changes and I discover this on the last full day of the trip less than seventy miles from the flippin' airport?  Bah!

Still tonight's caravanserai has BEARS.

Hotel BEAR

As does the Black BEAR diner on the other side of the car park.

BEAR family at the diner

Sorted!  Also the tap on the washbasin is made by Hansgrohe and thus endorsed by cycling's Crazy P Sagan.

There'll likely be a final instalment at some point but this time tomorrow I shall be in seat 81D of the Shiny Metal Birb somewhere over Canada eh.