It was nice to be back in Coloma without 50 fourth graders and 12 chaperones in tow.

I would be back with them in about a month so I wanted to get a few sketches in on a beautiful spring morning.

I parked in front of the visitor’s center and hiked up the road, past the ruins of the jail, past the cabin where James Marshall lived to the hill where Marshall still rests.

I have sketched the Marshall Memorial many times and this monument has because a sketching touchstone for me. I don’t get an opportunity to sketch it with a group of 4th graders I am looking after but that’s why I cherish my time here alone. Call it a sketching meditation.

I envisioned a panoramic sketch with the monument on the right and I wanted to include two of my favorite paragraphs about Marshall and Coloma from H. R. Brand’s masterful account of California’s Gold Rush: The Age of Gold. The two paragraphs are the last two in the book. I love a book with a great ending. And this is a great book!

I sat on a park bench and started sketching. I had the place to myself.

Meanwhile buses and cars full of fourth graders and their chaperones pulled into parking lots in the valley floor below.

After sketching, I returned to the valley floor via the Monument Trail. I headed away from the growing crowds at the Gold Discovery Museum to sketch the jail ruins.

I then walked over to Highway 49, Coloma’s Main Street and I sketched the quaint Post Office.

The first post office in Coloma (then spelled “Culloma”) was opened in 1849. The town has seen at least seven different post offices and the current building was opened 100 years after the first in 1949.

I love Coloma and I love bringing fourth graders here and seeing them experience Coloma for the very first time!

Bring it on!

What do you do on a rainy day spring break vacation to the Gold Country?

You go underground! 165 feet underground.

The “moaning” of the caverns are named for a sound that was emitted for the cave when the wind was right and the water table was in alignment. But the cavern is mostly silent now.

Moaning Caverns has one of the most interesting descents into a cavern. A spiral staircase spirals 16 stories down to the base of the main chamber. Our guide told us the age of the structure only when we were all at the bottom.

The steel staircase was built in 1922 making it just over one hundred years old! It is easy to lose your sense of depth while descending the spiral staircase; you always think the bottom is just around the next turn only to find yet another turn.

When you reached the bottom of the stairs you are in a vast cavern and our guide pointed out cloud-visions amongst the formations. Jaws there, a dragon up there, and a baddie from one of the Star Wars films. Some I could see while others were a complete stretch.

This seems to be a rule for naming cavern forms; a mixture of cultural references and food much like the differing names for Ursa Major: the Starry Plough, the Great Wagon, the Bear, and the Big Dipper. Different interpretations for the same object.

On my 16 story spiral accent I arrived a bit out of breath to see a former student (currently a 5th grader) who was about to spiral down into the cavern.

Her hand was bandaged to cover the stitches, as a result of her younger brother skiing over her hand at Dodge Ridge. I hoped she could navigate the stairs “one handed”.

I later found out that she did!

It’s wonderful when a tall tale becomes a reality.

Such is the tale of the Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County. Legend has it that it was a yarn told in a bar in the Angels Hotel. The tale was picked up my a young writer Samuel Clemons. He later changed his pen name to Mark Twain.

He found early success with the publication of the short humorous piece, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County“. Since that time be put Calaveras County, Angels Camp, and jumping bullfrogs on the map.

In 1928, the Jumping Frog Jubilee started in Angels Camp to commemorate the paving of Main Street. The completion has been hopping along ever since.

I wanted to explore the arena for the unique contest at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds.

While today the contest in the main hall was roller derby not leaping frogs I found the outdoor stage that was the testing ground on the third weekend in May. I found a seat in the bleachers and sketched the stage with the beautiful green rolling hills of the Gold Country as my anchor sketch.

To the left of the spread I sketch a bust of Twain at the Angels Camp Museum.

The record jump (set in 1986) still is 21 feet and 5 3/4 inches. The frog jockey was Lee Giudici and the frog: Rosie the Ripiter.

As my Gold Country Spring Break trip neared, rain (and snow flurries) were forecast from Sunday to Tuesday.

This throws a wrench into my sketching plans in my base camp of Murphys. Sketching with rain smears your efforts into a soggy mess. No matter. I would just use my waterproof, movable, sketching blind, ie my car!

I definitely had the historic Murphys Hotel on my sketch-list. Main Street in Murphys is a very busy place (especially on weekends) so arrived early in morning while visitors were sleeping off their wine induced stupors.

I easily found a spot across the street for a rainy day sketch of this Gold Country landmark. I pulled out my journal and began my sketch (featured sketch).

While exploring the side streets of Murphys, I came upon the Murphys’ 1850 schoolhouse.

The rain taps were opened so I found a parking spot and sketched the profile of the school. I normally might have sketched the structure head on but because of the rain I was forced to sketch the school from a perspective I might not have considered.

I returned with my sketchbook (a different sketchbook of course) to the North Grove Trail at Calaveras Big Tress State Park.

It was a Saturday in late March and the park was packed! The further along the trail I traveled, the less people there were.

I wanted to sketch the Mother of the Forest. This tree represent the human greed at it’s worst and human desire to exploit nature for profit. In 1854 the sequoia’s bark was stripped off in eight foot lengths. The bark was reassembled and displayed in New York and London, for profit of course.

Without the tree’s outer armor, the tree died. To some 19th century observers, this sparked outrage and people began to understand that these living giants needed to be protected and this shift in thinking gave rise to the redwood protection movement in California. And is the reason these trees are protected today.

I picked a sketching spot against a shed-sized boulder near marker number 18 and started a sketch that looked into the grove (featured sketch). The view sketched is looking into the heart of the grove where the large trees can be from 800 to 3,000 years old! I included a group of four for scale.