On our way to the Sierra, Noam and I have often quickly glanced left and right while whizzing through gold country in the Sierra foothills and thought it might be a nice place to visit (sometime when we weren't in a hurry to get somewhere in the mountains). The weekend after Thanksgiving we dedicated to gold country. The plan was to start in Coulterville and to drive along highway 49 (get it? Highway 49! Like the 49ers! Who came to mine gold! Personally, I drove across it about 400 times before I made the connection) to Placerville, stopping for the night somewhere in the middle. Now that the miners are gone, it is clear that the gold country towns live and die by tourism. The main drag to Yosemite no longer runs through Coulterville and there is no ski hill nearby, so Coulterville is a sleepy place. This adobe building was the Sun Sun Wo mercantile, a chinese grocery and probably opium den that operated from 1851 to 1926 on Chinatown Main Street in Coulterville:
The Hotel Jeffery in Coulterville, with its cool stamped tin siding and second story porch, operated until recently as a hotel and restaurant:
North of Coulterville we stopped in Chinese Camp to confirm what I have long suspected from driving through it on the way to Yosemite - there is nothing there. We tried to hike around Jamestown but it was raining and miserably cold, so from Sonora we headed to Columbia State Historic Park. The town of Columbia has a history similar to that of many gold country towns: founded in 1850, swelled to accommodate people mining nearby, burned several times, then declined as the gold rush wound down. Columbia is unique in that in 1945, the state of California bought the main street and several side streets, including the remaining buildings. There are several businesses on main street including a couple of hotels, restaurants, and shops, and people dressed in period costume doing demonstrations like blacksmithing and candle making. The Columbia jail:
After Columbia we headed to the Moaning Cavern of Calaveras County. Dripping water used to cause a moaning sound at the entrance to the 410 foot deep cave. We took a walking tour of the cave down to 165 feet below ground, a depth reached by a sketchy looking spiral staircase built in 1922 and at the time, the tallest arc-welded structure. One website I found calls this type of cave feature "cave bacon":
After the cave, we went to the town of Murphys to find food. Murphys has a super cute main street that is littered with wineries. We stopped at a bookstore so I could buy a book including Mark Twain's story about the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County, set in the town of Angel's Camp, where we would stay. At the bookstore, we asked for a restaurant recommendation and the proprietor and her friend recommended Mineral, a vegetarian restaurant across the street, or Grounds. We chose Grounds, where I ate a crab cake that nearly killed me. I spent 11:30 PM to 5:30 AM barfing every 35 minutes at the Gold Country Inn in Angel's Camp. Oh, it was horrible! Noam thinks Jesus punished us for choosing Grounds when there was a perfectly awesome haute vegetarian restaurant available. He thinks the punishment being meted out to me alone was a question of jurisdiction. I felt so awful the next day we just drove home rather than continuing our drive north, so stay tuned for Gold Country 2: Electric Boogaloo! Not sure when that will happen, because the thought of going back makes me seriously queazy, but you will be happy to know that Le Petit Bistro in Mountain View has since rehabilitated my relationship with crab cakes!
The Hotel Jeffery in Coulterville, with its cool stamped tin siding and second story porch, operated until recently as a hotel and restaurant: 
North of Coulterville we stopped in Chinese Camp to confirm what I have long suspected from driving through it on the way to Yosemite - there is nothing there. We tried to hike around Jamestown but it was raining and miserably cold, so from Sonora we headed to Columbia State Historic Park. The town of Columbia has a history similar to that of many gold country towns: founded in 1850, swelled to accommodate people mining nearby, burned several times, then declined as the gold rush wound down. Columbia is unique in that in 1945, the state of California bought the main street and several side streets, including the remaining buildings. There are several businesses on main street including a couple of hotels, restaurants, and shops, and people dressed in period costume doing demonstrations like blacksmithing and candle making. The Columbia jail:
After Columbia we headed to the Moaning Cavern of Calaveras County. Dripping water used to cause a moaning sound at the entrance to the 410 foot deep cave. We took a walking tour of the cave down to 165 feet below ground, a depth reached by a sketchy looking spiral staircase built in 1922 and at the time, the tallest arc-welded structure. One website I found calls this type of cave feature "cave bacon":
After the cave, we went to the town of Murphys to find food. Murphys has a super cute main street that is littered with wineries. We stopped at a bookstore so I could buy a book including Mark Twain's story about the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County, set in the town of Angel's Camp, where we would stay. At the bookstore, we asked for a restaurant recommendation and the proprietor and her friend recommended Mineral, a vegetarian restaurant across the street, or Grounds. We chose Grounds, where I ate a crab cake that nearly killed me. I spent 11:30 PM to 5:30 AM barfing every 35 minutes at the Gold Country Inn in Angel's Camp. Oh, it was horrible! Noam thinks Jesus punished us for choosing Grounds when there was a perfectly awesome haute vegetarian restaurant available. He thinks the punishment being meted out to me alone was a question of jurisdiction. I felt so awful the next day we just drove home rather than continuing our drive north, so stay tuned for Gold Country 2: Electric Boogaloo! Not sure when that will happen, because the thought of going back makes me seriously queazy, but you will be happy to know that Le Petit Bistro in Mountain View has since rehabilitated my relationship with crab cakes! 
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