Cromberg California

 

The RV Park, and a few other Resorts and Lodges, pretty much make up the community of Cromberg.

At just over 300 residents there is not much to the community.  There is a Post Office (here at the park), a Fire Station, a restaurant (Martha's Kitchen, mainly Mexican Food but without the Hispanic Decor...got a to-go order last night, and the food was just fine, especially for a small community like this), and one of the big attractions, the Twenty Mile House.

It is hard not to focus on the Twenty Mile House since this is the whole reason for the community to have an existence.  It is conveniently located twenty miles from Beckwourth California to the east, and Quincy from the west.  It was built in 1854 as a trading post for local gold miners and a stopping place for teamsters on the Reno-Quincy stage run.  It was moved closer to the Middle Fork of the Feather River, and was expanded to a two story hotel with ten rooms. 

Twenty Mile House soon went from just a stagecoach stop between settlements, to the center of Cromberg, with a trading post, a hotel and a school house. The stages that traveled this route changed their horses at Twenty Mile House.

In the 1880s, teamsters used eight or ten horses to pull their stagecoaches and needed bells to warn on-coming travelers. The stage drivers were the most popular men of their day, jolly and talkative. Miners lived along the river and would trade gold nuggets for grub or tobacco.

At the time, Reno was the nearest train depot. Stage coaches hauled travelers from Reno to Quincy in three days, and the Twenty Mile House was the first stop headed east, or last stop headed west. 

As I traveled what once was certainly the old stagecoach route

The Feather River Rail Route was built and operated by the Western Pacific Railroad, constructed between 1906 and 1909.  It connected the cities of Oakland and Salt Lake City, built to compete with the Central Pacific Railroad.  This brought the end of the stagecoach era in Cromberg, and the train did not stop in Cromberg from what I could tell.  The town started to decay.  In the picture above you can see the river to the left, and rail line in the upper right corner.

Today the Twenty Mile House is a very nice Wedding Venue.  The place entails 200 Acres, the Main House which includes rooms for wedding party, and a couple of other buildings to house the wedding party.  Some grooms and brides stay at the place for a number days after the wedding...so it is a honeymoon retreat too!

There is a large outdoor 'chapel' for the wedding, or if one prefers, there are other areas to hold the ceremony too.  A picture on their website shows a large lunch or dinner being serviced out on the lawn, with a brick patio for dancing, etc.  It is definitely going to cost a pretty penny to hold a wedding here...but it will be a nice wedding.  And the areas for having pictures taken of the bride and groom is unreal.  Their website, Twenty Mile House, has a wealth of information and pictures.

        

 

Another wedding venu nearby is the Kinship Ranch.  Although nice, it is not as elegant as Twenty Mile House.  

Twenty miles in any direction (Highway 70 goes east to west, west to east ... but other connecting highways can take you north or south) are about a dozen RV Parks, and numerous National Forest Campground.  There are places to hike, river access for Kayaks, etc., and numerous areas where gold was being mined.  

For us...it is the peace a solitude of the place, and the cooler weather. Yes, we run the A/C, but for 4 - 5 hours.  It is cold enough at night that we don't keep the windows open, and we run our oil filled radiator style heater for a couple of hours each morning.  Indy is now up to seeing a dozen or so dogs, some of whom walk by taking their owners for a walk.

Had a brief talk with Cathy, park owner, today and asked about the trees.  Yes, there are Redwoods on the property, more over by the Twenty Mile House.  The trees just outside our motorhome are the California incense cedar trees.  Behind the owners house, which is just across the dirt road from us, there are Redwoods, and the two trees do look a bit alike.  One thing I noticed was the lack of 'redwood smell' that redwoods put out.  The Sequoias don't have the fragrance that the Coastal Redwoods do, but they still put out a distinctive fragrance.

Golden Coach RV Park & Campground

 

It looks like we were very lucky to find this RV Park in Cromberg, California.  The park has about 60 sites, and most all are currently full.  Many of the campers are either long-time seasonal or full-time users.  (Had a guy walk by with his dog and he said he lived here full-time.  However, the reservation website says the park is open from May 1st through October 31st)

Outside our front door is this view, which is where the owners Cathy and Mark live, and they store the equipment used to keep the park in shape.  

Behind us is one trailer, and they have a doggie fence out their door.  This evening they were entertaining another couple, and there were two dogs, a rather large dog and a dog Indy's size.  Perhaps she might have a doggie friend while we are here.  As we sat out a couple of times today in the partial shade of the trees, mid-80's temps, we saw about eight or nine dogs.  No grass here, but there is a patch of grass on the other end of the park.

Here is another view of the driver's side of the motorhome.  You can see we don't have a campsite next to us, it is a bunch of tables and large fire pit.  We will have to see if it is used on the weekends while we are here.

The biggest surprise were the Redwood Trees interspersed among the Fir and Pine trees.  We happen to have many Redwood Trees right at our campsite!

The Park has a small store, showers, laundry, and an official US Post Office.  I will give more information about the area in my next blog. 

We are here through Labor Day, we may extend a week or so, time will tell.  The cost, about $20 per night for the monthly rate, full hookups, just can't be beat.  And the weather is so much milder than down in the Sacramento Valley.  I think we are really going to enjoy our stay here.

Finally Camping After a 1st Birthday & Mom in Hospital

We made it up to Truckee yesterday...here for four days (on our second day right now), and then headed to Golden Coach RV Resort in Cromberg, 15 miles outside of Quincy.  More on the camping later...first...

Addie had her first birthday in mid-July.  Mom, who had been fighting another UTI attended it and had a very good time.  Also there was Marcia, Michael & Anna (parents of baby), Shelley (my first wife and mother of my children), and my daughter Stephanie, who had a birthday just a couple days later.  I have many pictures of the day, but the parents are very 'shy' about letting close-up pictures out on the Internet due to hackers who use such photos to do nasty dirty things to them.  We all had a great time, and watching her eat her first watermelon, which was in place of a birthday cake (sugar is not yet one of the foods she has had yet...once you go down that path there is no end to it, says my son.)  She finally held it, took a bite, then made Michael take a bite of his...they have these games they play.  Looking at pictures of her dad at year one, Addie is a spitting image of him. 

The very next morning the Assisted Living Home could not get mom out of bed, or even very alert.  They called an ambulance which took her to Sutter Hospital.  Test after test, looking for signs of stroke, heart, cancer...it all came down to her having a UTI.  Click on this Google Search "UTI Delirium" and you can see how a UTI can make an elderly person very 'out-of-it', to say the least.  They put her on a IV drip for antibiotic and when the culture came back that it was a E. coli variety of a UTI.  A person's body contains  E. coli bacteria that normally live in the intestines of healthy people ... most types of E. coli are harmless.  When they get into the urinary tract, well that can hurt anyone, and can kill an elderly person.  Five or six days later and she went back to the group home.  Seems each UTI puts a dent into her memory, so her dementia is getting worse with each one, and with each month that passes by.  She is 93, pretty much the last of her generation.

So, here we are up at Granite Flat, one of our favorite campgrounds close to Sacramento.  Good Verizon for the aircard (only two bars, but we are seeing speeds in the 10-20 Mbps range, good enough for our needs.)  We liked it better when it was all 'first come first serve', but that changed a few years ago.  First about 2/3rds of the park was by reservation...now all of it is.  However, 'if' you come in on lets say a Monday, and find a spot which has no reservation until Friday, you can pay for two nights, then go online and pay for the later two nights...which is what we did.  $11 a night with the America the Beautiful Lifetime Senior Pass.  We are closer to the highway 89, but the noise never seems to bother us much, especially at night when there is very little traffic.

One of the things we wanted to do was to get away from the Valley heat.  It is 84 here near Truckee, it is 97 in Citrus Heights.  Our low tonight will be around 46, Citrus Heights will be around 65.  Since we have been out this year, the weather could not have been better for the month of June...then July came and Citrus Heights hit a high of 109 and 105 or over about 4 other times.  A few nights got down to the low to mid 70's, and we had to sleep with the A/C going all night.  One thing about RVing, the AC is very loud and it can be hard to get a good nights sleep with it circulating on and off all night.  

A few times in the past we spent a bit of our summer in Quincy at Pioneer Park.  They were full for the number of weeks we wanted to stay.  But Golden Coach RV Park, just 15 miles to the east in Cromberg, is about 800 feet higher than elevation than Quincy and 1,200 feet lower than Truckee.  So Cromberg will be a bit cooler than Quincy, a bit hotter than Truckee, but way cooler than the Sacramento Valley.  And they have a monthly price of $625, and she (the owner) prorated the rest of our stay through Labor Day at the same rate, just under $20 per night for our stay.  And it is full service, which means electricity, water, sewer, along with showers and pay to use laundry.  "IF" we need to run our A/C, it won't be needed at night because the lows will be around 50 degrees.  And as Verizon goes, the owner said they put a new tower right across the street from!  Verizon is great, AT&T is not...so we will be in Internet fast zone for sure!

Our original goal was to go up to Southwest Oregon to spend 6 weeks or so at Huntley Park.  The same day mom went into the hospital, a fire started just outside Agnes and this fire has grown to over 22,000 acres and is only 3% contained.  The fire is now 5 miles from Huntley Park, but we axed the idea of going there when it was 14 miles away and only 4,000 acres.  So plan "B" is what we are doing, and we feel we are going to like Golden Coach RV Park as we did Pioneer Park in Quincy.

Could not resist few more picture of Addie...she is opening up her first book delivery of her book subscription that her proud grandpa (me) and Marcia provided for her birthday, along with a kid friendly book case, one in which she can sit on as she gets older, for these and other books she will get.

Grandma Shelley and Great Grandma Dorothy.

Very proud Aunty Stephanie. (Addie is looking at a book that was already in her collection. The girl loves books, she is going to go a long way, such a smart child.)

And this girl here celebrated her third anniversary being adopted into our home on July 4th.  She loves to growl at all the people that she hears and sees passing by our campsite..but so far, no barking.  She is a good little girl for sure.

Indy -- Three Years Later

 

We got Indy kinda by luck.  Sister Sandy had seen this dog on Nextdoor around 10 am on July 4th.  Showed picture to me, and we showed picture to Marcia, and the order was given...."Go Get Her, I (we) Want That Dog!"

Look at what now I see as fear in her eyes.  Confused, she walked around the backyard with her tail under butt for the first 36-48 hours.  The 4th of July noise did not seem to phase her...probably because she was so very scared already.

She started to calm down, and by the night of the 5th she got a good night sleep...she bonded with me first, and her tail started to stand up in the air, an occasional wag of her tail, and her morning and afternoon treats from Arny and Sandy began.  She started to growl when I held her at anyone who came toward us...she still does this to this day for people she does not know, and sometimes for those who she does know.

Another thing that helped her was that Bubba was still with us for her first 3 months or so.  Look at the difference in her looks after being groomed, and having been with us for 2 weeks!  

And our travels began...  Now she is our only dog, bonded with both Marcia and I extremely well, and has a special bond with Sandy and Arny and other relatives.  She LOVES her cousin Parker, her special boy dog friend Jack who lives next to Sandy and Arny, and just about any other dog she comes across.

Above are a couple of more recent pictures of Indy.  She is such an important part of our lives.  

So tonight there will be a HUGE celebration in honor of our country ... and to us, in honor of our little Indy.  And how will Indy handle it? 

She will be higher than a kite!  She is a VERY sensitive dog when it comes to loud bangs, and other loud noises.  This is the first year we are trying ThunderWunder for the 4th, but we initially tried it out this past New Years Eve.  I gave her one at 10 am, will give another around 7 pm, and another around 10 pm...maybe 11 pm.  We hold her, wrap her in our blankets, but the next large BANG brings her back to being a terrorized dog.  

Hope YOU ALL enjoy your 4th of July.

Note:  Mom is doing well at the "Home".  We feel so much better knowing that she is getting good care, she is still close to Sandy and Patti, and her overall mental attitude is so much better.  She is getting up for breakfast each day since she has been there except for one.  She came over to Sandy and Arny's house last Sunday for a Lamb dinner.  And she is looking forward to being at baby Addie's first birthday party.