A place to eat as you pass through Downieville.

We much prefer the deli in the general store across the street, but it has changed hands and is being remodeled. Let's hope the new owners include a deli in their plans.

An old mine pump at the tiny park across the street from the general store.

A bike shop and bike tour center are just a few hundred yards up the street from the park.

Shops across the street from the general store.

Just 12 miles beyond Downieville on Hwy 49 is a general store in Sierra City (on the left as you head east). We split a sandwich and had potato salad and a coke: $11.18 for the two of us -- I'm still taking Mary on cheap dates.

We arrived at Kentucky Mine just as Judy Lawrence (center) was prepping a group for the 2 p.m. mine tour.

I snapped this picture of the mine museum just before taking the above picture. We had planned to tour the museum because we didn't see much of it during our 2010 visit. If you look closely you can see the white entrance door is ajar -- the museum was open. With the assumption that the museum would be open until 4 p.m. as stated on their web page, Mary and I began by looking in more detail at items on display outside the museum. After about 10 minutes we returned to tour the museum and the door was closed and locked. Bummer, a 120-mile round trip from Penn Valley for nothing more at the mine! I've added warning about this surprise on my 2010 page about the mine!

Mary and a utility steam-powered winch (donkey) in back of the museum.

The sign on the donkey.

This horse-drawn sleigh is across the driveway from the museum.

When you follow the linkage from the lever at the driver's right (closest corner in this view) you will see that it is a snow brake.  When the driver pushes the lever forward rods are pushed down into the snow on the inside of each sled runner (I pushed the lever to see this). The right-side rod is the vertical member a little more than halfway back. Another rod on the opposite side is linked by a shaft driven by the brake lever.

The sled is near this memorial to Chinese workers. 
The stone with Chinese characters directly above the plaque is from the Great Wall of China.

As we drove back home along the north fork of the Yuba River we stopped west of Downieville to see the heavy flow from late snow in the mountains. On the way up I had seen a stair step of rapids near this location but couldn't stop in time to park -- the caption would have been "Stairway to Heaven".