A Small Flake of Gold Country.

Just a small dose of two wheel therapy I took after work one day. A quick run to Coloma in the Sierra Foothills, to the Marshall Gold Discovery Site, where a man named ... James W. Marshall discovered flakes of shiny gold at the Saw Mill he was building on the South Fork of the American River in 1848.

This discovery ushered one of the most colossal migration of people in the Western Hemisphere known to historians. A promise of wealth and fortune which flared the dramatic and explosive growth and development of the American West in the following decades.

For me today, it was a brisk run on Salmon Falls Road - no traffic on a late week day afternoon. There used to be a time many years ago, when I loved Salmon Falls as a great motorcycling road right outside my doorstep. Over the years there have been quite a few McMansions springing up on Salmon Falls, with blind driveways and gravel driveways, which introduce risk from hidden vehicles entering the roadway or vehicles dragging gravel on to the road. So, while it still is a good curvy road, it is no longer a great motorcycling road, but rather just an OK road to get to the great motorcycling roads in the Sierra Foothills.   

As I passed the Salmon Falls Bridge, I spied Lupine covering the hillsides on either side of the bridge. The early warm weather and snow melt has this fork of the American River flowing pretty good already. The water level is rising fast. When I approached the water after taking the shot below, I found rows of Lupine submerged by the rising water line. It was a very pretty sight, more so than my shoddy picture could capture.