Well, today was another day with a meeting at a morning club. These are clubs that meet for breakfast at about 7am. That mean you get up about 5:30 to have a shower, organise your host family and travel the 30 miles to the meeting... It's a tough morning! Personally, I spent my preparation time combining a shower and speaking on the phone back home... Not a great preparation for the meeting! The morning club were fun tough. Most of our host families were in this club and they were very generous hosts who laughed at the jokes in our presentations, even though they'd heard them already!
Henry & Glen went AWOL... And had a great time!
After the meeting, Glen headed deep into the forests of the Sierra Nevada and we headed off to tour Tuolmne County. The first stop was the railway museum at Jamestown. We managed to take multiple photos of films involving Errol Flynn. There have been something like 200 films and 200 TV shows filmed here. Michelle enjoyed reading the classics that were filmed there. Little House on the Prairie... and may others!
Errol checks out his name sakes photo at the railway museum
Next stop was Calaveras Big Tree park. This park houses some of the biggest Sequoia trees in California. They are big. The eucalyptus in the Styx valley are taller, but not as broad. Volumetrically, these are massive trees. The pictures will do more justice than the words... We saw live trees, dead trees, rotting trees, squirrels, snow and much more. I'm not sure if it was everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it.
The Calaveras Big Trees mascot meets our own
Sarah proving that this tree is big
After the big trees stop, we visited Ironstone Vineyard. This is a beautiful place. Fantastic gardens and vines. They have concerts during the summer. Always bands that were big a few years back! Foreigner are playing here soon. I can't wait... The biggest claim to fame at Ironside is a huge crystalline gold nugget. It ways 44 pounds, is stored in a massive vault. Crystalline gold is a little different. It is bits and pieces of leaf, but not a solid ingot. It is very attractive. And this nugget is big. But 444 pounds isn't all that big when you consider that the 'welcome stranger' found in Aus was actually a solid nugget weighing over 150 pounds! Nevertheless, the ingot we saw was pretty dashed cool...
A very largest crystalline gold nugget. Much smaller than welcome stranger though...
Sarah & Errol sample a nice white
I guess that this was more a tourist day than anything else. It was fun. Thanks to Bruce and the team for organising!
The Team at Calaveras
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