Barkerville: Part I (Updated)

When I was visiting my parents during the summer, we made a day trip to Barkerville. It was my first visit, although they've been a few times. I remember looking at photos from Mom's trip there from when she was in highschool :) Barkerville is a town that was built during the gold rush. It's now a historic site. There are more than 100 buildings there, mostly original from the late 1800s, some are rebuilt, such as the chinese schoolhouse I believe. (There's a whole Chinatown there, complete with places to eat and shop). They were in the process of re-building the terraced gardens there. Across the street at the Lee Chong Co. Store Chinese Museum there are some china and opium pipes, etc. displayed that they found while excavating the gardens.

Chinese toys, teas, herbs, clothing, parasols and such

The entrance to China Town

The Lee Chong Co. Museum

The town is named after Billy Barker, the first man to strike gold there. He was very rich, as he found the biggest claim, but died with nothing. Near the entrace to the town is a giftshop and you can pan for gold there. I forget how much it costs, but you're guarenteed to find at least two or three flakes of gold in your pan. Plus the old guy helping the kids pan was really nice and super funny :) There's also a "Cornish Waterwheel and Flume" by the river where some of the street actors put on a show a few times a day, and you actually learn alot about gold mining and how the wheel works. The actors were terrific and really included the audience, whom they referred to as "investors."

Pointing out different parts of the Wheel and Flume

I honestly forget what we were all swearing to here..
but the shifty eyes are great!

Gold found after panning the debris that came up from
 underground when the wheel was running. 

You can easily spend a whole day there and not get bored, there's so much going on, and so many buildings to peek into or wander through.

I'm going to leave it at that for now though, more on Barkerville and some new sewing projects soon :)