Highway 49

Surprised by the interruption.  I am going to strike it rich! 

Instead of continuous driving on major highways to get to Lake Tahoe, we decided instead to take a leisurely drive through Gold Country on old highway 49.  This road drives through many historical towns that were created by the California Gold rush in 1848.  Now, many of these towns have historical museums, saloons, preserved and restored buildings, vineyards, wine tasting and little antique shops

Highway 49 is a pretty drive along the mountain range and our goal here is to stop in Coloma near Sutter's mill where gold was originally found during the gold rush in the American River.  Here, they still offer tourists the opportunity to try gold panning and you can keep anything you find.

Intense panning

We enter the very small town of Coloma and try our hand in gold panning.  This is when we discover just how manually intensive this process really is.  It entailed scooping, shaking, brushing off excess and a lot of straining to actually distinguish real gold from fools gold.

Biggest piece of Fools gold found by us