Day 4 - Dinner with Mark Twain in Angels Camp
Trip Start
Aug 29, 2011
1
15
38
Trip End
Sep 07, 2011
What I did
Angels Camp, California
Thursday, September 1, 2011
We started out by driving through the historic part of town and snapped a bunch of pictures of their frog models on display. Ok...one thing to note about Angels Camp is that they definitely have a thing for frogs...jumping frogs that is. It turns out that Mark Twain wrote a story called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and that theme really seemed to stick with these people. You'll find remnants of little frogs everywhere over there....from window dressings, to garbage cans, to statues and even store names. It turns out that there is an annual fair where one of the main events is the frog jumping competition. If you like frogs then Angels Camp is definitely for you.
We kept driving through town and came to their local museum...which was closed...but we snapped a couple pics anyhow.
Well we were getting a bit hungry and did notice a nice park a little ways back in town so we decided to grab some tacos from Taco Bell (I know, I know...but there wasn't a Del Taco in sight) and head down to Utica park to let the kids get some energy out. It turned out to be a great place to have a little picnic. The boys made some friends and got some good playtime in while Angie, Whitney, and I strolled through the grass.
We noticed that there was a large statue of Mark Twain positioned in the park and we got some pictures of it and also checked it off on our Roadside America App...as it shows up as one of the quirky sites to see out there. Great app, by the way, if you do a lot of traveling.
After saying goodbye to Mr. Twain and Utica park we headed due north on the 49 with Sutter Creek in our sights. Along the way we passed noted gold rush towns such as San Andreas (of earthquake fault fame), Molekumne Hill, and Jackson. We basically drove through the historical portions of each of these towns just to snap some video and make our gold rush tour that much more complete.
