Hey you guys! Thanks for joining me on another adventure! We are near Santa Cruz, California this week in the Redwoods at Roaring Camp Railroads. We decided to give gold-panning a try since neither April or I had ever done it before. Her attempts were almost comical, so I intervened and showed off my version. The camp employee ended up showing us how to do it. And just after we turned our pan (I didn’t last long; I’m a lazy miner), she called out that we had actually found gold! She put the flake in a vile and told us about how much it’s worth–not even a cent–but it was fun to have found it anyway. We explored the rest of the grounds, observing a blacksmith at work and listening to the cowboys play their guitars/croon their tunes. We walked over to check out a railroad push cart that we were hoping was free to give it a try, but alas, it was locked. I asked the Russian guy, who’s the bigger kid, as we walked from different areas to see who would get there first. Haha. It was finally time to take our train ride, and it did not disappoint! We had Dixiana, a 1912 steam engine, as our leader through the Redwoods on the narrow gauge railroad. It was absolutely amazing to experience those magnificent trees while riding along, watching & hearing this cool locomotive in action. We got to disembark the train just after the Fairy Ring, which they call their Cathedral Grove and host many weddings in. It was awesome to see the cluster of huge, ancient trees! We even got to see them prepping for a wedding only an hour away, including a warm-up cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” by Mike Silva of Country Guilty. And as we rode the train back to the camp, we had to wait on a side track for another train that carried the whole wedding party to pass us by. There was definitely something magical about that. Oh, I even got a personal tour of the 1912 steam engine and learned some cool tidbits about its boiler steam pressure, the injectors and the engineer’s controls! Overall, we had so much fun spending the afternoon at Roaring Railroad in California–I highly recommend it to both young and old(er)! We then went to Felton Covered Bridge on our way to dinner at Masood’s Deli. This covered bridge was built in 1892. It was so cool to walk through; so picturesque! And the sandwiches at Masood’s were quite tasty. Make sure you please go check out my other videos on my channel, Go Travel On The Cheap; thank
