Day 4, Wed., 6/17 Panning for Gold and Tubing at the Coloma Resort, American River

Today was our last day in Coloma/Gold Country.  We had an awesome lazy day around this nice RV park on the river.  First we rode our bikes along the river across from Sutter’s Mill and panned for gold.  We were using our 2 pans and viles to get gold flakes.  I looked down and saw a pretty big gold nugget (1/2 to ¾ inch long).  I got really quiet but excited and reached down and picked it up thinking our family might have just earned a few extra thousand dollars!  But darn it, when I brought the sparkling rock out of the water and looked closer, it looked more like a rock with gold glitter glue on it.  Sure enough, Sarah made the confirmation it was glitter glue.  A fake!  Nothing!   It looked so real underwater.  Someone played a good prank on me!  That’s what I get for all the silly pranks I’ve played on others J.  Karma.

Sarah and I swam all the way across the cold river.  Then all four of us skipped rocks for a while.  Then a beautiful deer came walking down the river near us.  She was drinking and then went to nearby bushes and ate some flowers and leaves.  It was a wonderful morning.  After lunch, we spent the afternoon tubing on the river again right in front of the RV park.  Walking there, we saw quail nearby and many geese and their gosling.  There were also crawdads in the river.  Always brave Andrea tried to catch some with her bare hands but they kept swimming away backwards.  She’s fearless—I love it. 

While tubing down river, we saw more deer right on the edge of the river about 30 feet away.  We also saw many large colorful monarch butterflies everyday along the river.   Great scenery and wildlife are here.  After dinner, we saw the International Space Station fly over at 9:27 pm our time (Thank you Mike Besoli for the email telling us.  We really enjoyed watching it fly by!).  Ryan has a great eye.  He was the first to spot so many of the deer the past few days but he also was the first to see the space station flying by as well.  We finished the night playing Frisbee after dark with our light up Frisbee.  Sarah’s already finished reading 2 books and Ryan is almost done with the second-to-last (thick) Harry Potter book.   Today was peaceful and relaxing and wonderful.   It was a great family day all hanging out together.

Deer walking right by our bikes

Panning for gold