Twain Harte Weekend

Last weekend we spent several quiet days in the heart of the California Gold Country. We stayed in a vacation home in the small town of Twain Harte, named after two famous authors who lived in California, Mark Twain and Bret Harte.

We won our weekend stay in Twain Harte at a silent auction benefit last spring. I think we were the only bidders on this item. E used to own a vacation beach house on the California coast. A couple times a year we would invite a group of friends and host a fun weekend. Since he no longer owns the property, we have missed doing this. The auction program description said the house sleeps 10 people. Cool! We could invite a large group of friends. Once we won the item and got the details we discovered that although it can sleep 10 people in four bedrooms, there is only one bathroom in the house. No way are we hosting a weekend for 10 gay men and only one bathroom. It would not even be practical for family gathering of 6-8. We decided to ask just one couple. After we put the invitation out to the couple, we learned that they had just broken up. One of them was available for the weekend we had chosen. Our party was now down to three. But we were good to go.

It turned out to be a wonderful weekend. Other than the bathroom, the house was magnificent and fully furnished. It had full kitchen with dishwasher and disposal, satellite cable-DVD-VHS TV and even Wi-Fi. The only disappointment was the one bathroom. It had an old fashioned clawfoot-tub with a rickety shower contraption around it with a plastic shower curtain you secure with clothes pins. It was like bathing in a baggie.

Saturday morning we did a five mile run and followed that with a six mile hike later in the afternoon. It was great to be out in the mountain woods. Other than these excursions, we didn’t do any of the local tourist stuff like visiting Columbia State Historic Park or Jamestown’s Historic Railtown Park.

The 3+ hour drive to and from Twain Harte was depressing for political reasons. The middle of California is full of Christianists. All I saw was mall, mall, mega-church, outlet mall, mega-church, mall, mega-church, mega-church, and mall. The area doesn’t feel very supportive of Obama or “No On Prop 8”.

TRIVIA: Mark Twain and Bret Harte were contempories but according to Wikipedia they had little love for each other. Twain made many disparaging comments about Harte.