Sacramento Area - Lake Minden TTN

We stayed in our membership park north of Sacramento, Lake Minden TTN, from May 2 through the 13th.  We enjoyed all the Hummingbirds that came to feed at our feeder, having to refill it 2-3 times a day.  We also had lots of gold finches visiting the bird feeder and continued to change the water in the bird bath multiple times due to the mess they made.

After giving Lexie a couple of days in Lodi, to recover from her gastro issues, we needed to give her a few days here at Lake Minden to recover from her limping.  She started significantly limping on her right front leg, the one where she has elbow dysplasia, the day after we arrived.  Not sure if she tripped, twisted it or whatever, but we tried to keep her still, administered cold laser treatments every other day and iced her leg.  She is still limping, but not as badly as the first couple of days.

We had a storm go through the area on Thursday, mostly rain and some hard hail.  A little scary as the storms moved through the area as there is no cover for the motorhome in a hail storm.  Craig heard while in Yuba City having the Explorer serviced, that damaging hail was going through the area, but the quarter size hard hail went north of us.

On Saturday the weather was primarily cloudy, with a few showers, so we decided to travel to Clarksburg and then down to Locke.  During these travels which was again part of the CA Delta, we came across multiple draw bridges.  The one pictured below was quite interesting and was apparently designed by the same engineer who did the Golden Gate Bridge.

We stopped at three locations:

Old Sugar Mill:  The Old Sugar Mill was originally the Amalgamated Sugar Company, a functioning mill in Utah that closed during the Great Depression. It was shipped piece by piece, brick by brick, to Clarksburg, where it was rebuilt and functioned as a mill that turned sugar beets into pounds of sugar until 1993.  From 1993 until 2000, the mill was vacant until it was bought by John Carvalho Jr., and renovations began in 2003 to make it a wine and tourism destination.

Bogle Winery:  The Bogle family started farming in the Clarksburg area in the 1800s and they are now into the sixth generation that is working on the farms.  They planted their first vineyard in 1968 and opened the winery 10 years later.  They started out planning on keeping the winery small, but at this time they are distributing to all 50 states and 40 countries.  For such a large distribution, the winery is still being ran as a very humble, small winery, utilizing the same farming techniques as when they started and providing an excellent wine for a very reasonable price.

Bogle Winery Tasting Room

Locke:  This small town was established in 1915 and is the only existing town in America built and inhabited almost exclusively by Chinese until recent years.  in the 1920s to 1940s, there was a population of about 600.  In 1971 the town was placed on the Registry of National Historic Places.  Today there are only about 90 residents, with less than 15 who are Chinese.  In 1990, Locke became a National Historic Landmark.

Star Theatre 

Locke Memorial Garden

School Museum

School room

We stopped for ice cream in this fountain and met
Martha, who shared the history about Locke and
the CA Delta.  We were there for about
an hour and so enjoyed our visit with her. 

The rest of our time at Lake Minden, we just kicked back and enjoyed.

Friday, May 13, we moved north to Redding, CA for three nights.