Ouch! Purple primer stings the cut on my finger. I look down at my boots. Encrusted in clay again. “When’s this project going to end!” I think. “200 feet of irrigation line complete, but I’m still mucking around in this slop.” I look at my clock: it’s 1:00 PM. “Thank God!” I exclaim out loud. It’s a Saturday and in just a moment I’m about to head towards Yosemite. By now it’s become a weekly ritual, something to look forward to during my labors. Ironically, this week I’m headed out to visit a near 200 year old trench dug by miners in their quest to bring water to their sluice boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m driving through the Stanislaus forest now. I can envision the miners. They’re thirsty, exhausted and recovering from their last poison oak battle. The cool, crisp, snow born waters of the Yosemite were just 20 miles away. I knew what they were thinking, “If only it flowed here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back to the present. I’m headed east on the 120 in hunt of the Golden Rock Ditch, the answer to the miner’s prayers. By 1860 there were enough mining operations in the area to justify the building of this eight foot wide forty mile local canal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I pass by our local diner, The Lucky Buck. A cold Newcastle comes to mind. “Maybe I’ll one have one on the back,” I think. Only one and half miles to my turn off now, my excitement grows. “Maybe this will be the day I find the first section of the ditch,” I ponder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turn onto Packard Canyon Road. I have been up this road a dozen times over the years looking for the start of the ditch and have always come up empty handed. I am armed with new data today. I need to make it to elevation 3400. The ditch will be some where around here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spot Lillaskog Lodge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ouch! Purple primer stings the cut on my finger. I look down at my boots. Encrusted in clay again. “When’s this project going to end!” I think. “200 feet of irrigation line complete, but I’m still mucking around in this slop.” I look at my clock: it’s 1:00 PM. “Thank God!” I exclaim out loud. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adventuresbyruss.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}