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July 24, 2005
gold country
last weekend the mcgordroys made a family outing to GOLD COUNTRY! our primary destination was ANGELS CAMP, CA, with the idea that we would see their "historic district", and then check out any surrounding sights. the historic district had mostly antique stores, along with a couple of cafes, and a western gear store. they also had some weird frog thing going on....
i asked one of the shop keeps what the deal was with the frogs anyway. she said that back in the day, samuel clemens (aka mark twain), had been boozing it up in town(my words, not the shop keeps') and started a frog jumping contest. the town then just RAN WITH IT, and made the frog jumping contest the centerpiece of their annual fair. there were all these brass tiles embedded in the sidewalk side of the street(the other was more a boardwalk), listing the annual winner and owner. then the town took it one step further...
these frogs were dressed in different outfits throughout the historic district. i'm not sure why i only took this one, especially since i laughed so much at the one wearing "steel toad boots"...LOL!!! they remind me of those hearts that were in san francisco for a while, and the fish that were in boston, and those other kinds that were in other cities that i don't know too much about....
we also went to the moaning caverns. again, i don't know why i didn't take more than this picture of the cavern(s). when you take the tour, they take you down 165 feet into the ground. apparently this cavern is large enough to fit the statue of liberty. of course, i wouldn't know, i didn't go in. to begin with, i didn't know it was a situation where you had to descend into the cavern; i thought the entrance would be a bit more horizontal in nature. then i thought, well, i could prolly make it to the 65 foot platform, b/c those were of the regular stairs variety, and not the spiral-largest-arch-welded-structure-on-the-west-coast-when-it-was-built-in-1914 variety. however, when i started in on the stairs to the 65 foot platform, i got about 10 stairs into it and discovered i have issues with claustrophobia. WHO KNEW?!?!?! certainly not me, who sleeps in a friggin CLOSET!!! so, i went outside, sat on the benches, knit, and watched families buy bags of excavated "stuff" which they then panned for the gold bits included.....
Posted by Meagen at July 24, 2005 10:40 AM