The BLT Guidebook

It was Saturday morning and we hit the road to a small foothill town east of Sacramento called Auburn. Auburn is known for beer, biking, hiking, and just being an all-around outdoorsy town. It’s close to Sacramento, which makes it a great day trip out of the city, and it’s about an hour and a half outside of Lake Tahoe, which isn’t a horrible thing, either!

Our first stop was in Sacramento for coffee at Old Soul Co. We mostly drive through Sacramento on our way to other places, so I’m not too familiar with what’s midtown, downtown, etc. We went to the Weatherstone location- it was a beautiful brick building with large glass windows. Inside had the old school chalkboard menu and plenty of seating outside. We grabbed two coffees, a breakfast sandwich, and continued our road trip.

Around 10 AM, we landed in Auburn, and we drove around through the green hills- really just wandering and exploring the highways and side roads we’ve never been to. We decided to make this our lounge day instead of our hiking day since we were spending the night.

Knee Deep Brewing (a California favorite for us) was open for outside seating, so we grabbed a picnic bench and enjoyed our beers in the mild temperature while chatting about future plans and watching a brief period of the San Jose Sharks game.

We took the afternoon to check into our hotel, relax, lounge a bit before heading to Old Town Auburn. A local favorite for us is Auburn Alehouse. The place has great food, a full bar, and their own brewery. Old Town is only a few streets that intersect- with the Alehouse on the corner. We are not the only ones who love this place, so naturally they have a long wait list. We put our names in and wandered up the street about 15 minutes in the meantime (it took over an hour to be seated- they were packed!) to where some other restaurants and little shops were.

To our surprise, this new (to us) restaurant was packed, and they had a musician playing music on the grass. We listened to him play and wandered into this bookstore called Winston Smith Books. Honestly, this is one of the best used bookstores I’ve come across in California. It had a fair number of people in it for a Saturday night around dinner time. There were clearly people who come there every week or multiple times a week and kids running around excited about what they were finding. It was a nice place to be.

The next day, we had a semi-early start with coffee toward Alta, CA and Euchre Bar Alta Trailhead. This ended up being about 35 minute trip to the east of Auburn. The goal was to hike down into this canyon and fly fish the North Fork American River.

The road was rocky getting there, but there luckily was a small parking lot at the end. It overlooked the canyon with snow-topped Sierra mountains in the distance. It was a much different setting than our usual stint to the Auburn Recreation area. It was beautiful from the start and also easy.

Too easy- as we accidently missed our turn for the trailhead and headed down this dirt road. We realized our mistake at the end and backtracked up to the parking area. A giant pink sign told us where to go and we missed it!

Back on track and we winded down this single-track trail all the way down into the canyon. On the way down, you pass ruins of old gold mining equipment from the Gold Rush era. At the bridge, you can see the beautiful natural carvings of the river canyon and how clear the water is from above.

We settled in for about an hour- I immediately hooked up on a fish. I also had a chance to test out my new water filter system.

That was our only bite of the morning and with the climb up feeling a bit daunting, we circled back up the way we came. The rain started in and we could see the Sierra getting a bit of snow in the distance.

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