Tulloch Mill at Knights Ferry

While adventuring around our road trip destination, Oakdale, California, we took a long winding country road out to one of my favorite spots.

Knights Ferry is a little town that’s about 40 miles east of Modesto, Ca, right on the Stanislaus River. It’s a tiny town with a lot of history and even more to look at. Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza were filmed here and it’s home to the longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi. The town was literally sprung from this guy, William Knight, who thought the area was a good spot to cross the river during the Goldrush of 1849.

Anyway, it now makes a great spot to take a little walk, explore and grab some cool pictures while seeing an interesting piece of history.

There is a picnic area right before the bridge, with river access to either fish or swim. It’s SO peaceful.

The drought has taken all the water levels way down in California. This photo was of the bridge and river, looking towards the mill, which is the brick structure in the left center of the photo.

“The hills are alive with the so-” Wait, the hills aren’t alive with anything, it’s SO dry!

This is the path to the bridge, it’s just around the side of the picnic area and when you approach the bridge, there’s a gap in the fence with access to these huge boulders that over hang the water. When there was more water, you can jump into the river from there or swing from a rope on the bridge, which is gone now.

The two pictures below are from about the same view point, four years apart. I know the sepia tone doesn’t help in the bottom photo but the loss of water and vegetation is pretty obvious. It’s still so gorgeous to me though!

The bridge is old. And I mean creaks in the wind, loose boards and freaky shit abounds. I can’t imagine being out here at night and I don’t know how it’s still standing after all these years. It use to be open to cars until the 80’s and I’m feeling like soon it’ll be closed to foot traffic as well.

The photo on the right is from 2010 when there were no restrictions and the left is now with the rope walkway.

I would DIE have done a photoshoot in the bridge before they ruined it.

Once you cross over the bridge, there’s a few trails for hiking and then to the left is Tulloch’s Mill.

It’s old, it’s abandoned, it’s a great piece of California history and worth seeing.

The place, to me, is just gorgeous. I love the old wood and stone, it’s so intricate and interesting. The graffiti is sad, but it’s not he most prevalent thing.

The brick work and the oak trees make for such striking pictures. Maybe it’s my love of the place, but I can never take enough photos.

Across from the mill is the office. I just want to go inside!

You can really get up close and personal with this old, heavy duty equipment. It’s kind of awesome to think that this is what supplied people with power. The detail and everything is just so beautiful.

Behind the mill, around the back is where the water intake area was…

You can tell that there’s more “visitors” around the back. There’s a lot more graffiti. BUT, I couldn’t resist heading underneath to see what was in there. It’s crazy to think the water was ever high enough to make this all under water. There’s even moss on the walls still.

The photo above, with all the windows and the sunbeam, that room is the one in the photo below, but from the back. The water would come in this back side and get made into power by the big-ass pipe in the photos above. This was also, at one point a flour mill. Apparently the two required the same type of set up to be created.

It’s pretty creepy around the back. There’s nothing for miles on that side so you never know what could be out there. I’d love to do a ghost hunt or something like that here one night. I can’t imagine what you’d find! All that construction, years of dangerous conditions, just the fact that the area was a river crossing for so long… We’ve all played Oregon Trail and lost someone forging the river. lol.

Back in the car and back onto the road, we follow the sign that leads to the town of Knights Ferry. Well, what is there isn’t much, but again, worth seeing and another place I’d love to take a ghost adventure to. I mean look at it!

This is the mechanics shop… Riiiight.

Little church on the rocks….

The. Jail. Bet you don’t wanna get caught doing anything bad in this town…. What the HELL is in there?!

Aaaaand what I can only imagine is a residence.

That was it.

There was only a few streets in the town. No lights, but a cool little hotel thing that looked like it might have something worth a mid-night check-out to scare you stiff.

All in all, it’s a cool little place to check out and if you’re on a summer road trip to Yosemite, you might just have to drive right through it anyway!

P.S, if you want to use any of these photos, just ask! My contact is in the headers.

Bravo Farms

On our journey up California Highway 99 we decided to make a few tourist stops… I’ve traveled this road countless times in my life, never stopping to really explore what this old highway has to offer. This time, with the family in tow, we decided to make a few stops.

One being Bravo Farms in Traver, which is just outside Visalia, California.

This place, in the reviews, didn’t fare so well, but we figured we would stop anyway, since they boasted cheese, a place to fill up the car, an eclectic load of stuff to look at and, well, cheese! lol

Our first stop inside was some ice cream. It was SO delicious! I got cookies and cream and we set out to take a look around!

Like I said, the inside is VERY eclectic. I loved it though. There is a restaurant on site, so everything as you’re walking around smells so good! Although it could also be that giant roasting spit in the photo on the right (dead center). They had some large hunk of animal just getting charred and beautiful as we meandered around.

This little area is their courtyard that’s off the back of the property. The whole thing kind of surrounds this yard of stuff. There’s an endless amount of vintage collections to peek at, old signs and memorabilia abound. To the right, that gingerbread looking thing is billed as a “7 story tree house” but, it’s not, um, actually seven whole stories. There’s seven levels alright… the seven levels of HELL. Observe from the outside, but be wary if you choose to enter. It’s rickety and narrow (I’ve got a big booty, so there’s that. Word up.) and rather terrifying. My son loved it and ventured through with his dad, I, unfortunately, got stuck and complained until I wedged myself out that door. Fun times.

They had this nifty little shooting range with “Not-Tomater” (not his actual name) kickin’ it there in the corner. I wanted to get closer and check it out, but my son was having no part of that bopping, talking, squeaking truck.

There’s quite the petting zoo that we didn’t visit, while we were there, but on the inside portion there’s a chicken coop with some friendly little foul in it.

Around the back, on the highway side, there’s a staircase up to the upper level which has a mini-golf putting green.

The upper deck of the place takes you around to the tree house. You can get in through this little door as well as the front entrance. Yes, there’s graffiti everywhere.

 

 

 

 

The view from the second level of the tree house, graffiti everywhere, again.

 

Aside from that, I could have lived in this place.

 

I’m not sure if it’s ever really crowded there, but it was nice to have the place to ourselves to wander around freely.

 

Upstairs, this is one of the holes for the putting green (that I’m not sure was in service, we didn’t try.) But I thought all the Coke memorabilia was really cool and I was beyond tempted to pop that “The Devil made me do it.” sign off the wall… I was surprised how unsupervised some of these amazing trinkets are left!

After all that exploring, I was in search of… Cheese. California, farm fresh, whole milk, cheese.

Can’t get much fresher than this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took two kinds of cheese for the road. The Garlic Jack and the Chipotle White Cheddar. I stopped and got three more for the ride home and ended up making some incredible dishes with what I had left!

 

As we made our way through the gift shop with our cheese, we spent forever looking at the seemingly endless array of stuff they had for sale!

 

I was so close to buying this little wine stopper, but I never have a need to stop the wine, so I passed.

However, it explains my life to a T.

 

 

 

I’ve got jams and preserves a plenty. I’ve got jelly’s and marmalades galore…

Whole, freakin’ honey comb for sale. I can’t knock the country life. I could settle in juuuuust fine… And this homemade pasta on the right has got me more than inspired to put my pasta maker to use this winter!!

 

All in all, yes, it may be a tourist trap, but it’s a must see if you’re traveling up or down the 99 in central California.

Enjoy!