California, Here I Come!

Monday started with the drive over the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just across the California line from Reno.  These mountains, while higher than those in Nevada, were covered with trees, mostly tall pines.  I had basically not seen a tree all the way across Wyoming and Nevada until I came to the Humboldt River valley in eastern Nevada, and then only a few.  The place where the highways cross over the mountains is Donner Summit, named for the party of pioneers traveling the California Trail who couldn't get over the mountains in time and suffered terribly in the winter here.

On the way down out of the mountains toward Sacramento, I passed through Auburn, a town proud of its "Gold Rush" heritage.  They have preserved and re-used much of their "old town," and they have a HUGE sculpture of a famous citizen panning for gold in a prominent place.  As in many towns near the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in California and Nevada, they had their own "Chinatown" because there were so many Asians working on the railroad.

This is what Lincoln Highway signs look like in this part of California.

Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, near where the first gold was discovered in the 1840s, was also a stopping-off place for new settlers in the area (sort of the place where they could stop, rest, and say "we made it").  It has been reconstructed and is a state historic site.

The Lincoln Highway didn't go straight into San Francisco from Sacramento.  It turned south, through the farming territory of Central California, then circled around toward Oakland, where drivers caught the ferry into San Francisco.  On my way through this territory, I saw a lot of vineyards and fruit trees in the San Joaquin area, then stopped for the night in Tracy.  Here is an LH monument I saw in Galt.






My last stop of the day was at a convenience store I had heard about in Lathrop.  It's decorated as if an alien spacecraft had crashed into its roof.  Kooky, huh?