The color of FREEDOM!

I can't fully explain the emotions tied into the purchase of our second car and what it means to me personally. But for the first time since moving here, I can actually LEAVE the house during the day WHENEVER I want or need to.

After paying off our Pathfinder and my student loan we decided to snowball those payments into saving for a second car. I got a "second job" working from home to help speed the savings along, and last Friday Adam drove to Austin to pick up this little red freedom maker.

It is a 2002 Mazda Protoge 5. The first owner was a little old lady who took it in to the dealer for routine tune ups. The guy we bought it from only had it for a few months before needing to upgrade. So it's low mileage and in pretty good shape.

When Adam brought it home he drove back and forth on the street while I stood in the driveway and watched. I don't think I have seen him quite so proud of himself in a long time. He was like a peacock strutting his stuff in front of me. It was so cute. He'll drive this car and I'll drive the Pathfinder—since it's NOT a stick....

So, party at YOUR house cuz now I can get there! (I might get lost but still...) Beep! Beep!

Apple Hill

       

Up the hill from where we live toward Pollock Pines is an area with different apple farms. Every year when the apples are ripe, people drive up from the city to buy fresh apples and other related items. It's a pretty drive and a pretty area. Although it was winter we thought we'd head up to see who might still be open. (There's this really great farm that makes fresh bite size apple doughnuts to order. SO GOOD. But they were closed.)

Only one spot was open, so we thought we'd give their fresh apple cider doughnuts a shot.

Alas, even though their offerings looked appetizing...the doughnuts had very little to off by way of taste, freshness, and apple-ness. So after being disappointed (and accidentally dropping what was left of our purchase all over the ground) we decided to buy some cider and make our own doughnuts!

Due to a lot of tweaking of the dough we ended up making doughnut holes. I used a reduction of apple cider in the recipe and added fresh chopped apples to the dough.

After frying we dunked them in a glaze — once again I substituted a cider reduction for water in the glaze.

Then as if the glaze wasn't enough—because it wasn't—we covered them with sugar right after glazing. BOOM! Apple Hill ain't got 'nothin on our FLAVORFUL and FRESH apple cider doughnut holes. We could have sold these.These were SO GOOD! We were very prideful and thought maybe we should offer the recipe to the farm out of the kindness of our hearts....

Gold Bug Park in Hangtown (Placerville)

As many of you know, Placerville is a mining town. Recently they've been upgrading Gold Bug Park & Mine  as an area of interest (it's still small-time but interesting enough.) So we drove into town to explore.

The entrance is in the back of the gift shop. The "tour" is either 5 or 8 dollars, it includes a hard hat and an audio wand.

Miners followed quartz veins to find gold. This mine was dug manually and blasted with dynamite. We could still see holes where they would have placed the sticks of explosives before setting them off.

According to the recording mining was hard work (obviously) and really only paid for your "jeans and beans." Not many made it rich. "The mines were closed by order of the President as gold mining was considered a non-essential industry and men were needed to go to war."

No, we couldn't see any gold veins running through the rock. But since it was abandoned for the war, it is likely gold could still be found there.

Below everyone is looking up an air shaft. We couldn't see to the top.
If you would like to read the history of this mine: click here.

Next we headed up the hill to the stamp mill where gold was extracted from the quartz.

The machine was amazing...massive. We were told it could be heard echoing throughout the hills up to five miles away.

Below is an explanation of how it works.

You can see how the machine worked by watching this miniature in the video here. It was small but quite loud.

In all, I am glad we went. It's worth an afternoon. There are trails and picnic benches as well. If you want to visit, as you're driving through Placerville, just look for the signs that say Gold Bug Park and follow them.

Yes I know...

Yes I know it's February and I'm still blogging about Christmas. Do you remember my New Year mantra? Well...I have been so busy "engaging" in the higher ups on my list that blogging is taking a lot longer than usual. I aim to be done with Christmas by summer. Heh.