Today we drove from Visalia to Groveland. As we made the journey, the route became very familiar to me because we took the same route in 2007. As we made the turn into the campground (Yosemite Pines), I realized at that moment that this was the same campground we stayed at 7 years ago. I have fond memories of this campground because it has an old abandoned gold mine on it's property. This area of California was first discovered by American explorers in the 1840s. They discovered gold here in the 1850s, and one website I found showed about 30 or 40 mines in the area between 1850 and sometime near 1920. The lady at the check-in said there is still gold in the soil in this area, but the particles are very small. She did tell me that someone last week found a piece of gold (no real size reference given....).
In 2007, Levi, Seth and I crawled about 20 or 30 feet into the gold mine, but this time it is boarded up because of safety reasons. Brandon, Bailey, and I hiked the 15 minute trail to see the mine and discovered a large rock just on the outside of the mine. As we looked closely, it appeared to have a piece of "gold" about the size of the tip of a ball point pen imbedded with the other minerals. I'm not exactly sure it was gold, but I'd like to say I "discovered" gold!
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