{"id":1431,"date":"2012-05-14T15:13:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bluoz.com\/blog\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2012-05-14T15:13:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:13:14","slug":"biking-for-meteorites-in-the-gold-country-and-gold-rush-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluoz.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/14\/biking-for-meteorites-in-the-gold-country-and-gold-rush-history\/","title":{"rendered":"biking for meteorites in the gold country and gold rush history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biking the South Fork of the American River Trail, hunting for meteorites in Coloma, and visiting Sutter’s Mill and Placerville<\/p>\n

With the slowly evolving quality of public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, a big question I always have is ‘how far can you go without a car’, either on a day trip or short weekend camping or maybe a little more, with only a bicycle<\/p>\n

It is possible now to get to Folsom or Placerville from San Francisco without a car in four hours. This has been described a few years ago in the Bay Guardian<\/a> and now there’s updates.<\/p>\n

You can take Amtrak with a bicycle from Oakland or Richmond BART to Sacramento in under 2 hours on the Capitol Corridor<\/a> for 37 dollars. From there you have two choices close by in downtown Sacramento. You can take the Folsom 507 train to Folsom<\/a> which has bike racks on the train (unlike Muni) or there is a commuter bus from Sacramento to Placerville on weekdays, or you can transfer at Folsom and use the Iron Point Connector to travel all the way to Pollock Pines which is at 4000 feet up in the Sierras. All of this is on El Dorado Transit<\/a> You can also bike along the American River from Sacramento to Folsom. There is a bike trail the whole way<\/p>\n

But what I did was take the train to Folsom and biked all the way up to Folsom Lake via Salmon Falls road to the Salmon Falls Bridge<\/a>. The newly opened South Fork American River Trail<\/a> which is the heart of gold panning country along that river and where gold was discovered in 1849. This is also the same area where parts of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite exploded and landed<\/p>\n

The South Fork of the American River get’s the 1989 Marin Pine Mountain steel frame San Francisco bike messenger trash bike treatment. The same trash bike that was stolen<\/a> and recovered<\/a> in South of Market<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0325a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0330a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

overlooking the Salmon Falls bridge<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0327a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0326a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

South Fork American River<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0329a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

abandoned Gold Mining operation from the 1850’s along the American River<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0331a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On April 22, 2012 a huge fireball from space estimated to be 1\/3 the size of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb exploded over this area<\/a> and rained meteorites over a wide swath of land along the South Fork American river. Maps, charts, Google KML and one of the main forums discussing that now is at radarmeteorites<\/a>. The fireball and NASA\/SETI search in the area is making international news now<\/a> with two confirmed finds right on the South fork American River along this same trail and in adjacent Cronan Ranch<\/a><\/p>\n

my own posting on the meteorite forum about this trip<\/p>\n

thank you very much, i didn\u2019t really expect it to be meteorites, but i was wondering what the blue stones were\u2026I think the chunky one is actually asphalt, and I saw a lot of that alongside hwy 99<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll try this one more time as it got hung up possibly because 2 links were in it, but this is my short trip to Coloma from SF (not just about the rocks)<\/p>\n

1 link removed now that the rocks link was posted\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n

ok, I finally made the trip from San Francisco to Coloma with a bicycle, on the train and bus to Sacramento then to Folsom and biked up Salmon falls road and then biked up the south Fork American River Trail\u2014with about 50 pounds of gear-haha<\/p>\n

it\u2019s all true what they\u2019re saying here\u2026It\u2019s quite hot now in the whole area, and if your from foggy refrigerated SF, you\u2019re not used to that heat\u2013the mosquitoes are relentless, lots of chiggers and snakes, altho I didn\u2019t run across rattlesnakes or scorpions and I had some pretty good DEET<\/p>\n

but just so people know, if you\u2019re coming from the coast, it\u2019s getting warm, so bring lots of water because there\u2019s no potable spigots out there on the Amerian River Trail and it\u2019s a good idea to bring filter or iodine tablets if you have to drink the river water like I did\u2026I must have drank about 2 gallons a day of that river water out there<\/p>\n

Anyway, only half the reason was to look for meteorites, and the other reason was just to get out of the city for a day or two and finally see a real starry night \u2013 i actually saw two satellites zooming across before the moon came up, very cool and worth it just for that<\/p>\n

so I biked the river trail which is awesome and saw maybe 5 people in two days, and 3 fellow mountain bikers\u2026I even went to the same sand bar as the SM34 find-but not known to me 2 days ago of the find there as it was posted yesterday<\/p>\n

then biked into Cronan Ranch and did the east Ridge trail and Up and Down \u2013 heck, it was up and down for 2 days\u2013LOL, and where did all my energy go?\u2026..<\/p>\n

exhausted, i finally had enough and biked up to Placerville to take one of the commuter buses back to Sacramento and back to the city \u2013 this is one of those rare chances of taking public transit this far out from San Francisco with a bicycle, and I wanted to see how possible it was \u2013 with no car<\/p>\n

but I did pick up a couple of rocks alongside the road hwy 49 north of between Cronan ranch and Coloma\u2026the problem with the roadside is there is a lot of black asphalt pieces all over so it can look tricky. I don\u2019t think I found any meteorites, but here\u2019s the photos anyway, just in case (btw, I know the blueish one isn\u2019t but what kind of rock is it?)<\/p>\n

full flickr photo set<\/a>. this is NOT a meteorite haha<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0405\"<\/a><\/p>\n

anyway, i still had a chance to go see the El Dorado Historical Museum in Placerville while waiting for the bus which was also worth it just to see that and here\u2019s the rest of the photos, american river and coloma and placerville<\/p>\n

IMG_0368a<\/a>