Funny thing happened today at Mojo...

Golly. Sometimes things just take you back.

While reading the paper as I always do on Sunday at Mojo I happened to strike up a conversation with the person next to me. I mentioned the Sierra Nevada and was asked, "How is the Sierra?"

It was quite a long time later that I realized not only had I sold this person on the place but that I really had a fondness for Tuolumne County that I am only too happy to share.

I used to live in a small cottage on Parrots's Ferry and would walk to Columbia Community College. Back then you could sneak through back yards to get to the college. I would pass a place called "The Covered Wagon" on the road that was its name sake, take a short cut around the neighbor's land and then down a forest road. I would get there in half the time it took to drive.

I met tons of young grubby kids at "The Wagon" as we called it and even after I moved to Twain Hart I still spent most of my time there. That old shed and its add-ons was demolished sometime in the late nineties but I still know quite a few people that used to live there. I have come to realize that our adventures in that rough and ruined landscape were uncommon in the current era. It is hard to believe that I am reminiscing of the 1990's like it was the 1890's but it's as if they're the same in my mind.

Columbia has a checkered history which began in the mining days when tens of thousands of miners lived there. At the time it constituted the largest urban place in California and was in the running for state capital. Those miners trashed the land though and eventually it became a shell of its former self. Today the old town is a State park and the community college sits beside it on much of the former mining claims.

For me Tuolumne County represents a piece of California history that remains undiscovered since most travel to Yosemite or Tahoe to get to the mountains. My parents were no different. They went to Camp Mather near Groveland in the mid 70's and 80's because that was where most of the other families that they knew went. However, they started looking for more and found the town of Twain Hart.


Twain Hart was our summer home throughout the late eighties and early nineties. Dad would often drive mom and us up there on the weekend and return to work in SF. We would stay up there for weeks on end sometimes and made friends with the local kids, exploring the Stanislaus National Forest and the Tuolumne River.

That was where my older brother and I would settle in for our post high school years in the late nineties. Even now people from "up the hill" would see my name on a reciept at Dodge Ridge or The Rock and ask about my older brother. I have always found that to be ironic since no one ever asks me about my personal life in SF and I have been here way longer.


Highway 108 and other similar sierra highways offer just as much as Yosemite Valley, Big Bear or Tahoe do and with half the crowds. The Forks of the Stanislaus River have a million places that remind me of Yosemite Valley such as Pinecrest Lake and Kennedy Meadows. There are breweries, wineries and even a few cideries.

I go back three or four times a year and while a lot of my friends have realized that there is a faster life in the cities they all look back on our time at places like the What Cheer Saloon and Camp Nine swimmin holes fondly.