Local Find: South Yuba River State Park

Our family loves a good road trip. Sometimes we have a destination in mind, other times we just want to get in the van and drive. Not too long after we moved into our new house we did one of our "just jump in the van and GO" drives. Turns out, we live not too far from a State Park called the South Yuba River State Park. Talk about a great find!

At a later point I may come back and talk about some of the history of this area--because there is a lot--but today I'm just going to share some pictures we took on our first trip out there. (Oh yes, we have been back!)

This is the entrance to the Bridgeport Covered Bridge. It is supposed to be the longest single-span covered bridge in the world and if I had any idea what that meant, I would tell you. To me, it's just a beautiful bridge with some great history.

Coming out of the bridge and heading to the left, there is a trail. One of several. (This isn't it, but this park is home to the first wheelchair accessible wilderness trail in the U.S.) We decided to hike out a little ways just to see what it was like. Since we hadn't known where we were going we weren't really prepared to do anything too taxing. If you look in this next picture you can see Sam leading the way, Jake inspecting some find, Jason playing a leapfrog game with Izzy, and Zander is--well, wait. What is Zander doing?

Oh, yeah. That's right. Zander was reacting to these two signs, which we had just passed.

Don't worry. We talked to him and his stress level went down significantly. Here he is a few minutes later, pretending to be a mountain lion.

A view of the bridge from the trail. Isn't it gorgeous? I can't wait to see it in the spring. (These pictures were taken in mid-September.)

Another view from a little further away.

We turned around after a mile or so and went back to the area around the bridge. There are some "beaches" there where people are allowed to pan for gold. No, really! Isn't that kind of neat? We let the kids play in the water for a little while. Sam really, really wanted to find some gold. He didn't, but he really seemed to enjoy himself anyway. (There he is, up in the top corner.)

Zander had an absolute blast playing in the rocks. He did nothing but climb them nearly the entire time we were there. It was a lot of fun watching him explore.

Izzy's favorite activity was throwing the rocks into the water. Or onto the other rocks. When he threw them onto the other rocks you could hear this resounding "BONK" noise that just echoed off the hills around the river. He was in heaven after discovering that.

Isn't this the perfect place for kids to explore? I think this might be their favorite place so far.

Where is your favorite place where you live?