SOULSBYVILLE, CA.
Day 158 – We slept well last night. No traffic noise, quiet campground (it’s not the weekend yet), happy cats birdwatching from the windows of the RV, and waking up to fluorescent green shining from the new spring growth in the trees.
Today we drove to Soulsbyville where Rob and his family took vacations to visit with the grandparents more than 50 years ago. A Trip Through Memory Lane, it was a step back in time for Rob and brought back lots of good memories. Memories of running around and playing with his brother and sister and his cousins, and memories of holidays together with grandparents, aunts & uncles and their children.
The grandparent’s house was built by Rob’s maternal grandfather in 1966. It was one of the first built in a 493-lot subdivision that initially housed 15 cabins/homes in an area called Willow Springs Ranch. As of January 2021, 397 homes were in this subdivision.
The town of Soulsbyville was originally a mining town. The subdivision is certainly not all of Soulsbyville, it’s the area around a small lake, but it is not a big town. When his family visited the grandparents, the kids would run around the neighborhood which at the time only had a few homes built. The world was their oyster. The family as a whole would walk to the lake to go swimming and/or fishing.
The nearby city was Sonora. There was one traffic light in the whole town when Rob’s family visited. Everytime they drove through the city they would laugh at the one traffic light – such an oddity, for people growing up near Los Angeles. Sonora was an old western mining city. Today when we were driving through Sonora, with its fast food restaurants, Dollar Generals, gas stations, and malls, there were many traffic lights and once we left the sprawl and entered the part that had become the trendy old western section where the tourists were walking, we encountered a big traffic jam. Soulsbyville, however, was a charming residential enclave with homes winding along narrow, tree-lined streets up and down the hills.
Click any picture in each group of photos below to see a slideshow of that group.
We found the house his grandfather built and were sitting there staring at it when a man in the garage looked up with a questioning look on his face. We pulled in to the driveway and Rob introduced himself and told the man why we were there. It turned out that he and his wife (John and Terry) had purchased the home in September 2021 as a retirement home. John was very nice and was happy to discuss the home with Rob, even letting Rob walk around and take pictures. He said they were doing some renovations, preparing it for their grandchildren’s use when they come over to visit and play. Isn’t that the coolest thing?! John said they absolutely loved the house and said it felt like home to them immediately. He chatted with us for awhile, then we drove to the lake where his family used to go and took some pictures there. Driving through the town a little bit, we got a few more pictures.
We also drove through the Glory Hole and Tuttletown Recreation Areas, the two areas that surround New Melones Lake. We wanted to see where the dump station was in case we use it before leaving here. There were four campgrounds to check out in the two Recreation Areas. Two of them were closed for the winter, to be opened in May, one of them was the one we are currently staying in, and we drove through the fourth campground, Manzanita, to check out the camping sites. This campground was older than Ironhorse, the one we’re staying at, and the campsites were mostly not big enough and basically too narrow for us. Still, if necessary in the future, we might be able to squeeze in to a couple of them. Ironhorse is better for us.
On the way back to the RV, we took a side road to see “Mark Twain’s Cabin” on Jackass Hill, which according to the signs really wasn’t Mark Twain’s Cabin, but a replica. Sigh. Beautiful area, though, on Jackass Hill, which turned out to be the stopping place of packers carrying supplies to miners; often 200 jackasses were on the hill overnight.
Back at the RV we sat in the screened tent and read. It was a beautiful day, mostly sunny, high of 75 degrees. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain all day. We also walked around and took some pictures near our campsite of the Osprey, wildflowers, and the scenery.
Glad to see you found grandpa & grandma’s house. It does look different from memory but also the same in many ways!
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I thought Tuttletown was in Gardiner, NY. Now you are telling me it’s in CA. WHAT? (Couldn’t resist this jab, tee hee). So Rob, Is their bourbon as good?