California Field Trip #4: Gold Country

On Thanksgiving day every year, we drive up from the Bay area to the Sierra Nevadas, and we stay there for a few days of family reunion festivities. For the day after Thanksgiving this year, instead of shooting, we took a family hike at South Yuba River State Park, location of the longest single-span covered bridge in the world--

--and an excellent place for this very engrossing California activity:

And search for gold we did! Lacking gold pans (something that I plan to remedy before our great Out West trip in 2014), we searched by hand in the cold, cold, COLD water--

--and I'm sad to say that although we found plenty of flakes of shiny mica, we did NOT strike it rich.

Ah, well, something for next time...

Although Matt and I stayed OUT of that cold, cold, COLD water, the kids just could not seem to help themselves--

--although they had varying levels of success with not ending up freezing and wet and miserable:

It's a good thing that dry clothes and leftover mincemeat pie await!