Our most recent photo gallery, which isn’t actually recent at all, is another throwback to 2014. This set covers a short trip to Gold Country in the Sierra foothills at the beginning of the summer of that year, just after the kids got out of school.

Julia had completed a unit on the gold rush during the school year, so she was excited to share various historical tidbits about the region. And, thanks to the power of marketing, Joe had been asking to go see Mercer Caverns ever since we visited the Mystery Spot: he kept seeing orange Mercer Caverns bumper stickers around town that bore an uncanny resemblance to the ubiquitous yellow Mystery Spot decals, and logically concluded that Mercer Caverns should be next on (or at least high on) our list of sites to see.

We spread the trip out over a couple of days, starting in Murphys, where the big kids panned for gold while William was content to just splash in the water. Sadly, they didn’t find any, and we then headed into Mercer Caverns themselves. I was carrying William on my back in a hiking baby carrier, which made things interesting: his head stuck out several inches above my own, so I had to be conscientious to avoid braining him on a low-hanging stalactite.

All five of us made it out alive and intact, and we headed next to Calaveras Big Trees State Park, which features the first giant sequoias documented by European explorers. This includes the stump of the Discovery Tree, which was once the largest tree in the grove, but was felled just a year after it was first documented. The stump was then used as a dance floor, and bowling alleys were constructed on the fallen trunk, much to the irritation of John Muir; in response, he is said to have written an essay titled And the Vandals Danced upon the Stump.

We snapped a picture of Julia and Joe standing in front of the Pioneer Cabin Tree, which featured a tunnel carved out in the 1880s to allow it to compete as a tourist attaction with similar trees in Yosemite and elsewhere. Sadly, in preparing this post, I learned that this tree fell during a rainstorm in January 2017, less than three years after our visit.

The next day, we visited Moaning Caverns, which was, if anything, a more impressive spectacle than Mercer Caverns. Once again, I had to be mindful of the risk of decapitating William, but for the second day in a row, he survived.

After we finished spelunking, we stopped at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park and Columbia State Historic Park. The former included the train from the movie Back to the Future III, which may have interested me more than the kids. We toured the area by rail, which was a welcome respite after all the walking we’d done over the last few days, did a little more panning for gold—still coming up empty—and enjoyed some cool drinks in a tavern before we packed up and headed home.

The gallery closes with some pictures from the construction of one of my favorite Father’s Day gifts ever. Julie had the kids make signs calling out something I did for them (William had help) and composited them into a small poster that sits on my dresser to this day.

Gallery: Gold Country and Father’s Day