Money falling from the sky

by Willow Bergeson
(El Dorado, California, )

We had a really enexpectedly fun field trip this year. My son is in fourth grade and is learning state history, in our case California history.

On the day that gold was discovered they have a reinactment at Coloma Gold Discovery State Park. It was Absolutely MISERABLE Weather. WE decided to go anyway and it ended up making the whole experience so much better.

First of all, getting drenched, walking in thick mud, standing in leaky tents, standing over open fires and listening to the wind made a deep impression on what it might have been like to live in those conditions. I felt like we learned so much more in those few hours than we had in the months of reading at home.

To top the day off though, we got a funny story out of it, we bought one small souvenier, in the chinese camp we bought a replica coin, one with a square in the middle. My son loved it. Right before closing time we were looking around the gift shop and he dropped it. The strange thing was that we didn't hear it drop on the wooden plank floor, but he knew it was gone, we looked everywhere, and couldn't find it, he was so disappointed that the docents gave him another coin and we thanked them and gave up and went outside.

We opened up our umbrella to step back into the storm and the original coin dropped on our heads. We ran back and told them it fell from the sky! They ended up giving my son both coins and some quarts with gold and he was so excited he talked about it for days.

My Comments: Thanks for sharing this great story.