Two Rivers
Been trying to reduce postings on camping given it might be viewed as a luxury, but we also use it as a scouting and education tool. Toward the end of summer we twice visited the junction of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin Rivers. And now that the weather is colling, we stick to more day trips, exploring nearby creeks and hills, staying closer to home. It’s only in the summer we bother to cross the Altamont into the great San Joaquin plain for the larger rivers. If we follow the course of the Stanislaus, it takes us to our former home in Arnold California.
We really don’t go anywhere unless there’s a body of water to moderate the summer’s heat. So, rivers are a regular draw. We can also count the lands surrounding the river’s course not only have a good water supply, but their geography grants them relative aquifers. We’ve seen farms and properties directly alongside Calif rivers that siphon water out under the levee, and was surprised such access was possible. But modern properties like that are few and far between, yet at the parks we can imagine life as it was a hundred years ago.
Where the Stanislaus joins the San Joaquin is the old southern mine site of San Joaquin City, and prior to 1849 is was a mormon colony named “New Hope”. The New Hope colony was financed by Samuel Brannon, the first California millionaire, owner of the California Star which first published news of the gold discovery at Sutter’s mill, and then President of the mormon people who traveled around the Cape to Yerba Buena upon the beginnings of the 1846 Mexican War. The Brannonites were mostly unaware of the mormon succession crisis in Nauvoo Illinois, proceeding with plans to establish a place in the Far West. After bad blooding, the settlement of New Hope was abandoned, replaced nearby by the goldmining outpost of San Joaquin City.
Today the site lies between Two Rivers RV Park, which is a private camping grounds, and Caswell State Park. Surprisingly, the private RV park is cheaper at $35 per night. But it sits right on the juncture of the two rivers. With a five year drought in California, the water levels were very low and you could practically walk across both rivers without going chest deep. But there’s plenty of nice spots for kids, especially in the shallow waters. At Caswell there’s the Salmon Bend with a nice beach, and several other swim holes in nearby Ripon. The RV park has a well-graded beach with a number of islands midst the San Joaquin. The drought made fishing poor but better picking upstream. These are campgrounds we intend to frequently return with the Stanislaus being one of our favorite Californiawatercourses– the other being the Moke.
From these scouting ventures I was particularly impressed by the town of Ripon. The central valley has been in a ten year housing boom which hasn’t spared Ripon. But most of the land around the community is farming, there’s an abundance of green due to ready irrigation, and the downtown is kept clean unlike nearby Modesto. There seems to be quite a few historical churches along their main street with the Dutch Reformed being the most influential, running a nearby Protestant Academy for highschool aged kids.
I was drawn not only by Ripon being a gateway (like San Joaquin City of old) to Murphy’s and Sonora, but within its jurisdiction there being a curious region called “New Jerusalem”. The oldest Protestant church in Ripon is the methodist on First Street which is today owned by the Free Methodists after serving for some time as a meeting house. We attended it with some mixed feelings since it’s forgotten something of it’s own past, namely, class meetings. Given this was a week before Patrick McKay (RLDS elder) visited our house, I felt the concurrence of old New Hope and modern New Jerusalem might be a sign. And perhaps it still might be. The area is entirely farmland, being on the outskirts of Ripon proper, but we expect to return to this basin in the future as well as travel further along the Stanislaus– beyond Oakdale, remaining open to signs & keeping all things in prayer.
Bunny Trails 
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