Quiet time in Lotus, California

Tuesday, 25 September.  Today was a "quiet" day, a day of rest for us old farts.  Once in awhile its just nice to be lazy and do nothing.  Plus my bad knee/leg was acting up after the full day of walking during our Sonoma/Napa wine country sightseeing outing, so, a good day to let it rest. Spent most of the day working on this blog, so its pretty up to day, except for this entry.  We drove into Placerville (about 8 miles and 16 minutes away on a winding, curvy road) for a good country home-cooked dinner at the Buttercup Pantry.  After a little grocery shopping at the local Safeway - we're having Laren & Teena out here for grilled hamburgers tomorrow afternoon - we headed back to the TT Ponderosa campground.  It was a very pleasant evening - temps in the low 70's - so we opted to uncork one of the bottles of dessert wines we keep chilled and sit outside and relax.  I let Lynette pick and she choose a nice Rhuburb Liqueur from the It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere winery in Cashmere, Washington.  So we poured a nice glass for each of us, took a sip, and immediately knew that 5 O'Clock brandies and dessert wines have a nice alcohol content; in this case, oh, about 25% by volume or just over 50 Proof  We definitely needed smaller glasses or needed to cut this stuff with some soda water or 7Up.  A very nice drink, but a "sipping" drink, for sure.  Our campsite is right on the American River as it flows by the campground and we're right in front of some rapids.  Sitting out under the stars - so bright and so many of them - made for a very enjoyable evening.

Believe the plan tomorrow is for Laren & Teena to come out to the campground around 10:30, and then we'll head over to Placerville for some sightseeing.  Placerville (aka Old Dry Diggings, Dry Diggings, and Hangtown) is the county seat of El Dorado Country and has about 10,400 people. When gold was discovered in nearby Coloma (our campground is just a mile north of this small town) in 1848 - sparking the California Gold rush - Placerville was known as Dry Diggin's after the way the gold miners moved cartloads of dry soil to running water to separate the gold from the soil. In 1849, the town earned its most common historical name, "Hangtown", because of the numerous hangings that occurred there.

This "criminal" still hangs from a house on Placerville's main street. We wondered what the smell was the whole time we were in town!

By 1850, a few local churches requested a more friendly name be bestowed upon the town. The name was not changed until 1854 when the City of Placerville was incorporated; at that time, Placerville was the third largest town in California.  The town became a central hub for the Mother Lode region's mining operations. As you might expect, Placerville is a historic community from the gold-rush days, with many old buildings from this period; a walk down Main Street today reveals many historical markers, signifying spots of certain events or persons of importance during this period. Placerville was also on the line of the Pony Express, the short-lived mail carrier service that connected California to the Midwest and East...basically from Sacramento to St Joseph, Missouri.

Photos of historic buildings in Placerville