ROAD TRIP to the Mountains of Northern California

ROAD TRIP to the Mountains of Northern California

[Applause] Trouble stay away from my Door trouble stay away from my door trouble B don’t come around the mall TR stay away from my hey there what’s happening this is the Robinson ranera Indian gaming but no I did not just uh go gamble I am not a gambler at all the last time that I was in Las

Vegas I uh played some slots like nickel or penny slots or whatever which they don’t have hardly any machines there where you can actually put real money in them it’s all like credit cards but I played like a few bucks or whatever and I just found it to be extraordinarily

Boring I would much rather spend my money on video games than uh playing slots at a casino but I just thought that I would start this video there showing a little uh aspect of uh Northern California here the Indian gaming so many of you will know that uh

Gambling is legal in Nevada however we are not in Nevada I am driving to Nevada city which strangely is in California I might be going to Nevada as well but uh more about that uh later perhaps but I am just leaving Yukaya the uh town where my mom and stepdad live

And going on a little Adventure so the past week since I got back from El Salvador or like 5 days today is Friday then it was like perfect sunny weather there in uh Yukaya but I wasn’t adventuring at all finally I was ready for an adventure and

Uh here we go into the rain so I’m headed for the Sierra Nevada mountains now Nevada actually means mountain or mountains in Spanish and so it’s redundant to say Sierra Nevada mountains welcome to Nice N California along Clear Lake up ahead but uh Nevada is a Spanish word that you

Find all over the place since of course this area was part of I guess it’s Mexico not sure if it was previously part of the Spanish Empire anyways the uh Spanish speakers Mexicans Etc were all up in here and of course there was a big uh land deal as a result of

The Mexican American War but I won’t get into all that so I am doing the drive across the Central Valley of California here it’s a 3-hour drive from Yukaya to Nevada City Nevada city is a really cool little town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains

I have a hotel reserved there for the next four nights and the plan is to go skiing around Lake Tahoe so the reason that I am staying at a hotel in Nevada city is for a few different reasons but the first and main reason is because the hotel there is less than

Half the cost of a hotel in trucky or elsewhere around Lake Tahoe and where I’m planning to go skiing is at Royal Gorge which is a CrossCountry ski resort and perhaps at Doner ski ranch a downhill ski resort but both of them are this side of trucky about like

A 25 to 30 minute drive there you go 455 a gallon for gas here it ain’t cheap and so Nevada city is west of those ski resorts by about like 45 to 50 minutes so I would have to drive 25 30 minutes from trucky anyways I’m only adding an extra 20-minute drive from

Where I’m going to be staying in Nevada City so it’s not a you know big difference in terms of the driving so you go lucern another town along Clear Lake so there is Clear Lake a big lake maybe the biggest lake in California there you go good shot of

It not sure about that but that might be the case and so being uh in Nevada City on this side of the mountains means that I can watch the weather and if it turns to really bad snowstorm blizzard conditions then I just stay on this side and then I

Don’t have to deal with getting over that higher pass and then a fourth reason is because I have some history in Nevada City which I won’t go into now but uh I’ve spent a fair amount of time around there and just thought that it would be cool

To revisit so there you go that is the uh long story longer of uh what’s happening here so four nights at this hotel and then I will plan to uh do some skiing over the next couple of days and I’ll see what else maybe some snowshoeing or just adventuring around I

Don’t know nothing specific plans then after that for next week then I’m not sure but uh maybe I’ll do a bit more exploring around and then I’m planning to head back to Yukaya for one last uh visit there and then after that then the uh Bigger Adventure for the spring will

Very likely be beginning but I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen uh then but various things are in the works so there you go this video is just going to be me driving over there in the rains I’m not sure really what else to

Uh show but uh you can see my room and get a little taste of Nevada City we’ll see what the weather is like there and I guess I’ll show a little bit of these little towns so here we are coming into lucern population 2011 elevation 1332 feet never stay Lake Street Lake View

In lucern gas and service so these are all really quiet towns along Here but uh a nice location along this uh pretty Lake here all right we’ll see what happens in the coming couple of hours cool mural on the side of that tank there not even sure which town this Is Clark’s is that the town Buddy’s coffee secondhand store Limit Out Bait Tackle loding the red and white food store Oaks red and white food store maybe this is Oaks that sounds like it makes more sense Oaks Plaza so we’ve left Clear Lake behind and just up ahead here is where

We will leave the pills here that I’ve been driving through for the past uh hour or so and then enter the Central Valley but it’s kind of the northern tip of it so Interstate 5 it goes from Southern California all the way up to Washington state is up

Ahead here and it goes through the Central Valley so you can see already the hills are getting smaller and basically this is it there hills and then here straight road lots of farmers fields and Orchards California is famous for agriculture and the Central Valley is where a lot of that is

Happening so we’re on California 20 going east and here Junction Interstate 5 to the right heading south to Sacramento the San Francisco Bay Area Los Angeles San Diego and Mexico and to the north up to reading Mount Shasta the Oregon border Ashland Portland Washington State Seattle and

Canada so this is the little town of kaloa you can see Yuba City Highway 20 to the right that’s where we’re headed historic Kusa so while I was uh coming into town I saw A sign for another casino and realized that I’d forgotten to explain the situation with the casinos here in California California because gambling is not legal throughout California whereas in Nevada it is legal Statewide in California it is Indian gaming so I don’t know the exact uh details but basically the uh Native

American reservations at some point I don’t know if a lot changed or what or if they just kind of took advantage of a loophole or something like that but uh they were able to get around the ban on gambling because they’re kind of a separate jurisdiction something like that and so

You have uh the Indian gaming of course Indian is a misnomer an incorrect name for the Native American people since Christopher Columbus I guess would have been the guy who coined the term thought that he was in India and called the local people Indians and that stuck but uh anyways

It’s called Indian gaming probably there’s a better term for it now but uh so there are these casinos around and I guess they have to be on a reservation not certain about that but you can’t have casinos and slot machines Etc just wherever you want in California it’s only uh associated with the

Reservations all right so up ahead here Yuba City to the right I think we’re about halfway there or so there we go Nevada City 63 Mi okay maybe we’re a little bit closer than halfway so we’re now driving over the Sacramento River of course Sacramento is the capital city of California coming

Into Meridian population 400 elevation 52 so the Cent Valley is very low elevation but then out here on the left you have this kind of randomly placed little mountain range and on that subject I got something wrong at the beginning of the video when I said that Nevada

Means mountain or mountains so Nevada actually means snowfall or snowy Sierra means mountain range or or mountains so the Sierra Nevada is the snowy mountains and so it’s a little ironic that the state of Nevada is called Nevada when it’s much more famous for being very dry desert but the name means

Snowy and so Nevada City then means like snowy City when it’s kind of elevation and it probably does get some snow in the winter at certain times but it’s not way up in the mountains it’s in the Foothills but as you will see once we get there soon it

Is a really cute little town and here you can get a better view of this little miniature mountain range kind of cute but it’s all flat in every other direction except straight ahead you can start to see the foothills of the Sierra Nevada the snowy mountains so we are now in Yuba City

Which is actually kind of a city population 62,000 there you can see Highway 99 ch to the left Sacramento to the right we’re continuing straight so I wanted to uh tell a little bit of a story I mentioned that I have some history with Nevada City so way back in

The fall of 1994 crazy to think that that was almost 30 years ago then long story but I had been living in Eugene Oregon from March of 93 to October of 94 so for a year and a half and for various reasons then I uh packed up moved out sold my truck and

Left on a hitchhiking Journey totally kind of unknown and uh the first stop was to go to the Ananda Village Retreat Center which is in the Hills outside of Nevada a city it is a yoga alternative Community founded by one of the Disciples of paramahansa yoga Nanda the author

Of autobiography of a yogi so he was an Indian Saint who moved to California in I think the 1920s and kind of brought yoga to the west and so one of his disciples created this uh community in the uh Hills outside of Nevada City and I’d read one of his

Books the path by crean and uh decided to uh stop there for a few days I had very minimal funds maybe 800 bucks 1,000 bucks something like that and so I couldn’t stay for long but I spent maybe you know three nights there or something but I was hitchhiking

So I uh hitchhiked down from Oregon and at that intersection would have I guess gotten out of a car and then started walking down this road and I might have not gotten another ride that day or maybe I got a short ride but I think that I must have not gotten a ride

At all because somewhere up ahead here is where I stayed for the night and no I don’t mean in a hotel I think that I will recognize oh yeah I remember so there’s Yuba City and Maryville Maryville is on the other side of a river over a

Bridge but they’re very close to to each other and I remember walking over that bridge so I walked all the way through Yuba City all of this with my backpack I forget if I had a tent maybe I didn’t have a tent but I had a sleeping

Bag no I think that I did have a tent anyways up ahead there is the uh overpass and Bridge I think it’s over a river or else over a big uh sort of just Valley or something like that we’ll see soon so here you can see Yuba County

Line and Maryville city limit and yes there is a river Maryville population 12,800 it didn’t mention the name of the river so you can see on the right hand side there is a pedestrian sidewalk so I walked all of this and got into Marysville kept walking so here you can see Grass Valley

Continuing on Highway 20 that’s where I’m headed Grass Valley is is right next to uh Nevada City and so I walked all of this still walking way back then right turn Here and here you can see the edge of town so I walked all this way and then and it must have been you know about to get dark or something because I walked over this right here there’s an orchard on the other side and that’s where I slept for the

Night just lay down in the grass I guess I had a camping mattress definitely a sleeping bag I might have had a tent but decided not to use it there or maybe I use the tent who knows but uh I kind of remember just uh laying

Out my sleeping bag under the trees kind of in the grass there and then the next morning got back out on the road and continued hitchhiking to Nevada city which at this point is uh getting pretty close Grass Valley 33 Nevada City 37 interesting Dome structure

There and so we have now crossed the Central Valley seeing some low Hills here but unlike that little mountain range that uh we saw a little while ago that was just an isolated sort of an island of uh Hills in the middle of the valley but up

Ahead here what you’re seeing is not an isolated couple of Hills but the beginning of the massive Sierra Nevada mountain range and so it starts small and then gets a lot bigger including the tallest peak in the mainland United States the tallest mountain in North America is Mountain no in

Alaska but of course Alaska is separated from the uh rest of the US and so the tallest mountain in the contiguous 48 states as they’re called or if you’re in Alaska you call it the lower 48 or if you’re in Hawaii you call it the mainland but uh anyways tallest mountain

Is right here in California Mount Whitney and that is in the Sierra Nevada mountain range but it is a long ways away from here Way South but the Sierra NADA range covers a lot of distance going down the Nevada California state line for hundreds of miles and

Then heading in this direction then I will be going across it and so it’s much narrower you can get over it in like an hour or so and so so what I’m going to be doing with the skiing is staying in my hotel in the uh foothill mountains but they’re going to

Get bigger than what we’re seeing here and then it is a you know 45-minute drive up to the ski resorts which is like smack in the middle of the mountains and then you just continue down the other side and uh it doesn’t take long to get down into Reno and then

It’s a big you know Valley it’s called the Great basins on the other side of the uh Nevada Sierra Nevada range cell tower I guess then you have Nevada which calling it snowy is a little bit of a misnomer there is some snow but uh most of it is the Great Basin low

Elevation with various Hills and some mountain ranges as well so there you can see it says Rough and Ready Highway there’s this town Rough and Ready it is 2 miles off of the main Highway which I don’t believe that I have ever been to but the name is

Cool and it sounds like it might be a cool little uh like wild west sort of a town so let’s uh go take a quick look classic old car there nice area pretty uh trees and grassy Fields with horses and cows huh maybe Rough and Ready isn’t really a town because that

Felt like 2 miles maybe it’s just an unincorporated area or something awesome highway road or something oh okay we have a sign welcome to the historic town of Rough and Ready okay established 1849 all Right Rough and Ready Road Rough and Ready highway is there going to be an actual sort of downtown Rough and Ready Village okay Rough and Ready fire depart I guess this is basically it General Blacksmith post office Rough and Ready California 95975 looks like it’s kind of sort of barely a town I think that is basically it a little taste of the wild west let’s take a look at that whatever that is right there nobody behind me there the great Republic oh that’s too bad no

Trespassing but uh we can get a look at it Workshop Sheriff Rough and Ready docs agu cure whatever that is California mine Lion’s root beer speaking of root beer I got a good one here which I highly recommend virgils just had one a little while ago cane sugar it is

Delicious got some chickens and roosters out there toll road 1860 George gaard A uh yoke I guess for a couple of cattle to haul a carriage or whatever chew smoke male pouch treat yourself to the best we use the de laal cream separator whatever that is very cool Rough and Ready mine oh wow looks like that’s the actual entrance to the mine

Kentucky Ridge Baltic RNR mng mistletoe Escape way California Republic flag the uh flag of California it is still the same I think basically all right well that was interesting let’s get to Nevada City Grass Valley city limit population 12,860 elevation 2411 so we’ve come up a

Bit from the uh Central Valley but still not very high up so Grass Valley is the uh larger town that is very close to Nevada City here you can see Nevada City left lane still on Highway 20 but here you can see things have really changed especially in terms of the

Trees totally different uh trees evergreen trees so it’s very different terrain now all throughout here feeling a bit more like we’re in some proper mountains are least getting close especially in Nevada City which is just a couple of miles further Nevada city city limit population 2 or 3152 elevation 2474 my hotel

Is right around here somewhere I think I’ll get off at this exit here and literally 5 seconds later I saw my hotel from the road here I hadn’t plugged it into Google Maps yet but this is the right exit and then I just go back uh that way historical

District up there I’ll get checked in it’s getting late 5:30 or so but enough light to uh get a little taste of the Town more of the uh Wild West Gold Rush History so here we go $90 a night including taxes pretty good deal very nice room I love the uh setting here in the uh Forest it’s actually right next to the highway right there but uh lots of trees all around here so the uh rooms in like trucky and around Lake

Tahoe closer to the ski resorts are all more than 200 bucks a night minimum including at Airbnb so a uh much better deal to stay down here and it is a nice area all right let’s get out there and go see the cute little town of Nevada City before it gets dark

Here so you can see here some of the historical buildings look at that one really Nice looks like it’s a Resturant Tavern cool the Stone House open for dinner H so this is the main street up ahead here as you can see there trucky that is kind of the main town on Interstate 80 in the middle of the Sierra that’s a hub for uh skiers if anybody happened to see a video by foresty Forest a few

Weeks ago when he was stuck in a snow storm that big blizzard that came through then he was in trucky I follow his channel a fellow Kook Canadian Nevada City chocolate shop so you can see it is a just really classic old style Gold Rush era town is also still very much

Alive it is very small though end of the uh Town pretty much right up ahead it’s a Friday night so probably making it a little bit more happening United Methodist Church so there you go that is basically it but there is lots to see and do all through the area so the Ananda

Village that I mentioned that I went to is outside of the Town up in North San Juan I forget how far that is like 15 20 minute drive something like that and so once I hitchhiked from that spot that I pointed out alongside the uh Road there back in

Maryville the next day I continued the hitchhiking got here and then I remember very clearly hitchhiking right up ahead up here I don’t think that I stopped in the town I got a ride from somebody who dropped me off up ahead here but without going through the town there’s another

Exit and then I continued hitchhiking it was a nice uh Sunny warm day even though it was like I think October Yeah so basically right up here maybe at this light I walked from the uh Highway over to here continued hitchhiking and then got a ride with this Guy whose car was so full so that is the uh Main Highway right out there you can see trucky to the left Nevada City Grass Valley to the right so my uh battery died on my camera right there right as I was in the middle of telling the story but uh basically I

Uh you know got a ride to right there and then walked up here started hitchhiking and a guy p over whose car is just all full of stuff like just all you know all throughout the car just this you know beat up old car and so I

Stuff my backpack into the back on top of the stuff here and then there was still stuff in the front seat and so I like climb I think even through the window and get up on top of the uh stuff that’s sitting on the front seat here

And then he drives me out to nor sanan I forget if he got me all the way out there to aanda or if I had to take another uh uh ride from there or what but uh that’s the part that I clearly remember is just climbing into this old

Beat up car just filled with stuff just a classic hitchhiking Vagabond type of experience so that is going to do it for this video I’m going to head back to my uh room take a break there for a little bit and then head out and uh get some uh

Dinner in town so more coming from the Sierra Nevada mountains of California see you I you down Always think I’m finding Bur while I’m

Traveling across northern California from Ukiah to Nevada City in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
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Music during the video (in order):

“Trouble Stay From My Door” by Roy Williams
&
“Keep the Home Fire Burnin'” by Bo the Drifter

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Video created by Gabriel Morris, who is the owner of all video or photo content. Filmed with a DJI Osmo Action: https://amzn.to/3gSi8rA

Gabriel is a world traveler and travel writer who has been adventuring around the world since his first trip to Europe in the summer of 1990 when he was 18 years old. He is author of “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel”, “Following My Thumb” and several other books.

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