I spent most of my childhood in Mariposa, a Gold Rush town close to Yosemite. The people deliver on all of the humility, self-reliance, and rampant racism that you would expect from a small town. The town part where all of the shops and **** are is about 2-3 miles long.
There's a place there called Pizza Station that has burned down and been rebuilt 4 times
There are a lot of fires there. In 2004 (I think), there was a bout of insane fires started by an arsonist that almost destroyed the town and my area got evacuated. There was ash everywhere, **** was like a volcano. Seems like small news compared to last year's fires though. They had a pretty bad one last year as well, but it didn't threaten the town part.
One of the shops in town was a Chevron next to the high school. They'd let us go off campus during lunch and my group of friends in my freshmen year would always hit that place up. When we would go in, we would have one of our friends (who was one of the ~20 black people out of the city's 2,000 citizens) act sketchy like he was going to steal stuff. Then all of the rest of us would load up on snacks and **** while the racist cashier and owner or whatever were keeping an eye on him, then we'd leave without them noticing. Then he'd buy something small and we'd all share the bounty.
So ja I like the rural environment there and the weather's nice, but the people suck. And the restaurants in the town are like a bad joke. But otherwise it's alright I guess.