our anniversary trip through gold country

after staying at addie and art's peaceful little home in grass valley saturday night, we hit the yuba river on sunday. it is one of my favorite places on earth.look at this water. pure bliss.you can clamber all around, up and down the river, pulling yourself through the currents like a fish. there are all sorts of holes and caverns and waterslides and waterfalls. darin says repeatedly that it is a natural waterpark for adults. (kids too.) the water is the perfect temperature. you don't have to skimmy in slowly like i usually do.

i felt like a mermaid.

we headed out to downieville and sierra city. we were so in love with downieville. it is a tiny old mining town at the fork of the yuba and the downie rivers. it has five bridges and very old buildings and stories. a woman named juanita was hung here in the 1850s for stabbing a white man who had bothered her on the fourth of july.

here is the itty bitty library.
the town is so cute it looks like a make believe village. we got pizza at the gallows cafe and sat out on the back patio overlooking the river. all the kids from town were swinging from a rope swing off the bridge, and people brought out their fishing poles. the town's population is 325.

feasting.river behind me. also we were surrounded by mountain bikers from the bay area and santa cruz, ebullient after a rough day, and ready to hog out even more than us. we took a long beautiful drive through the countryside to sierra city where we had planned to camp. in the end, because of the smoke and it was getting late, we decided to splurge on a romantic room at the riverside inn back in downieville. it was so lovely. patchwork quilts are perfect for a mini-second-honeymoon.
we walked across the bridge and went into a bar in one of the oldest buildings in town (1852). it was modeled after an old whorehouse and there were old fashioned paintings of sexy ladies and weird old stuff everywhere such as this bear's head:here we are out back getting goofy on the patio that hangs right over the river.
sweethearts. during the night we saw a bear in the parking lot of our inn. i heard a loud crash and we were sleepy but i said, honey go see what that was! he was like, nah. so i'm like, i'm too curious. i went in the bathroom and stood on the toilet to peek out the window. there he was, a giant stealthy black bear rummaging in the dumpster. i'm talking massive, like as big as my dining room. at least that's how he looked to me. darin ran to grab his camera but the big old dude left pretty quickly.

here is the balcony of our room in the morning over the sparkly river. we got to go to sleep to the sound of rushing water: even better than a fan!

walking around adorable downieville in the morning. i wish we could go back for the fireman's dance next weekend!

back in grass valley we had a delicious lunch (asian scramble and nutburger) with addie at south pine cafe where artie works. then we gallavanted to bookstores and thrift stores and had homemade ice cream at a place called mindy's. darin and i bought a massive stack of books at booktown because we are lame nerds who don't care about blowing money. i want to write down all the titles but you probably don't really have a burning desire to know.
riding in the convertible with ade.back at home addie showed off how her cats do amazing circus tricks to get treats. we did a major photo shoot for coal beautiere in the yard and garden and overall artie was a good sport even though he had just quit smoking that day. he still posed very nicely over and over again and let addie put lots of jewelry on him. by the way, addie is growing some lovely veggies in that little garden and i can't wait to partake!

here we are, married for one year and still dreaming big. we love june 30!