Next door to the railway museum is a stand of giant redwood trees, this display of a trunk section is massive, the brass plaque closest to the centre of the log is labelled 'birth of Christ'. Ie it was about 2000 years old. Lots of other trees there were as big, one single tree was 17 feet across at the base, and many were 200 – 300 feet high.

We thought this tree was interesting, lit up through the middle by the sun.

There are lots of beaches up the coast north of Santa Cruz, including this one called Davenport Landing beach. Beautiful coarse golden sand and spectacular cliffs. Lots of surfies were out on the waves doing their 'thang'. In the distance you can just see the change in weather we were heading for: from sunny and hot to cloudy and cold only about 15 minutes up the coast!

This is Pigeon Point lighthouse built in 1871, usually you can go to the top of it to look out on the view but it was closed when we were there for repairs. It's hard to imagine this was on the same coastline of the last photo.

Finally we made it to San Fransisco, where we got a little lost trying to find highway 101 to get back to San Jose. Fortunately San Fran is very picturesque and we got a photo of this great cityscape for our trouble...! This is looking towards San Fran from the northwest, Fisherman's Wharf is to the left just off the picture.

We did get onto the highway 101 eventually (by fluke really!) and it goes past the very impressive City Hall of San Fransisco. The dome is beautiful and the building has gold leaf details everywhere.

We wanted to do a weekend tour of Highway 49 which runs through the famous area where gold was discovered in 1849. It was a fascinating trip, we started near the northern end at Auburn and headed for Mariposa. This pic is over the hill from Auburn in a big recreation area. Reminded us of Pelorus a bit.

Next town on Highway 49 is Cool (hot actually, the average temperature for the 3 days was about 36 degrees!).

Next town is Coloma, where a State Historic park preserves the area where the first gold discovery was made. Lots of interesting things to see although not many original buildings as the miners mostly lived in tents and were transient.

This is a replica of Sutter's Mill, used to mill logs for the area.

This is a mining tool, a sluicing gun we think...

This is an example of a cabin similar to what a miner would have used if they stayed working a claim long term. According to historical data they used to fill the mattress with dry pine needles.

The other side of the same cabin, this was 5-star accommodation for some lucky miner...!

Another piece of mining hardware - a stamp mill that crushed the ore in order to extract the gold.

The major towns were served by freight companies that operated mule driven wagons like this one. They would be drawn by 6 or 8 mules. It was a week round trip to the nearest big centre.

We actually went on a carriage ride this time! It was great fun, even Rod enjoyed it....

Still at Coloma, this pic is of the main street which doubles as Highway 49. There was a vintage car rally passing through when we were there.

The next town is Placerville, not much to see there...

The next town was smaller but slightly more interesting...

At Amador City (not as big as you think, look at the population size...) we talked to a very nice man at the local museum. He told us about Amador once having 5000 people, and the up the road there is a gold mine that gives tours, photos follow.