Dip into the Dordogne for a vine old time Golden wander
Follow the rich seam of gold rush 49-ers for a wealth of memories you’ll treasure for ever in California’s Yosemite
There’s gold in “them thar hills” – golden sunshine, golden vistas and, yes, you’ll even find a few genuine golden nuggets in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
The chunks are exposed every year by rushing meltwater, picked out by a handful of old-timers still searching for their fortunes in the rivers and creeks of Yosemite National Park.
It was home to the great California Gold Rush which hit paydirt in 1849, sparking a frenzy of activity as the hopeful 49-ers flocked to the towns of Columbia, Jamestown and Sonora, and spread throughout the 1,160 square mile area. Today you can follow in the footsteps of those early pioneers, creating golden memories of your own in the midst of inspiring peaks, forests and historic towns of Tuolumne
County. Many people visit Yosemite to wonder at the granite splendour of the El Capitan and Half Dome peaks, and the misty majesty of the Vernal Falls.
But there’s so much more to see and experience that it’s worth planning to stay for several days rather than just make it a pit stop on a Californian road trip.
Everywhere you feel steeped in the history of the old Wild West. At the Columbia State Historic Park you’ll find an authentic Gold Rush boom town with wooden sidewalks, hotels
and saloons dating back to the 1850s, a working blacksmith and a genuine old stagecoach pulled by four horses. This was the setting for Western movie classic High Noon, and the Wells Fargo office on main street was the centre of shipping for much of the $1billion worth of gold that was mined in the area in just 20 years from 1850. Many other films and TV series were filmed in these parts – including The Virginian, Unforgiven, Gunsmoke and Petticoat Junction. Not far away, Jamestown also has many authentic buildings still standing from the period. And at Railtown you’ll see close up some of the iconic engines of the Sierra Railroad which featured in TV series such as Bonanza and Little
House on the Prairie. One in particular stands out as the star exhibit – the No.3 engine which featured in those TV shows and in the film Back to the Future III in 1990.
To complement the historic towns and rugged natural beauty there are great places to stay, fabulous food with a mind-boggling array of choices while you decide just how active you want to be.
We stayed for a couple of nights in luxurious log cabins at the Lazy Z Resort, near the town of Twain Harte, while we got over the flight from the UK to San Jose and threehour drive up into the Sierra.
Enjoy the mountain air and wildlife as you relax in the pool and hot tubs with a natural feel created by the use of granite boulders.
After a hearty breakfast at Alicia’s Sugar Shack, we drove on up to Pinecrest Lake for a two-hour kayak expedition at 5,600ft above sea level, against an extraordinary backdrop of mountain and forest.
Enjoy the mountain air and wildlife as you relax in pools and hot tubs with a natural feel
Working up a thirst, it was then back to Jamestown and the Gianelli Vineyards Tasting Room.
Some amazing wines are grown in this region – so after a walk around Jamestown’s shops and atmospheric main street we stopped for some more sampling at the Inner Sanctum Cellars.
Dinner was a delicious affair at
the stunning National Hotel. Tuolumne – pronounced To-all-oh-me – also has some rich, fertile meadows and excellent growing conditions for a variety of crops.
We stopped for breakfast at Cover’s Apple Ranch, a producer of ciders, run by a friendly extended family of German Baptists who follow a traditional lifestyle and dress code along the lines of the Amish communities.
Not only do they produce some of the most delicious nonalcoholic ciders you’ll ever taste, they cook up some amazing dishes, most notably their apple dumpling and mile-high apple pie – so-called because it’s stacked like a skyscraper.
Lunch at the St Charles saloon in Columbia was followed by another wine tasting – this time at the Indigeny Reserve winery in the hills outside Sonora.
The excellent wines, though, are only available in California!
That night we moved on to the Groveland Hotel, a one-time “Sporting House” of the old West, where one of the residents forgot to move out. My room just
I had arrived expecting amazing, but all my expectations were surpassed in wonder...
happened to be the one haunted by the ghost of old Lyle, a gold panner from the early 1900s who was accustomed to sleeping with a box of dynamite under his bed.
He passed away – peacefully – in room 15 but has made his presence felt to guests using that room and elsewhere in the hotel ever since.
My two nights, though, were thankfully undisturbed!
The adventurous can trek for miles and camp in the wilderness but we settled on a long walk along the edge of Hetch Hetchy – the beautiful lake behind the O’shaughnessy Dam which holds back the Tuolumne River and provides drinking water for most of the San Francisco Bay area’s seven million population.
Following a superb refreshment stop at Evergreen Lodge – where you can stay in cosy log cabins with all the amenities you’d expect – it was on to the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoia trees.
You walk down the nowclosed Big Oak Flat road, one of the first roads into Yosemite Valley, to view these majestic redwoods which can grow up to 280ft tall and almost 30ft round.
The oldest is said to be around 3,500 years old.
It’s a bit of a hike back to
the car park but a delicious dinner at Rush Creek Lodge quickly restored our strength.
This is a family-friendly resort with rooms, suites and hillside villas plus a fabulous pool, live music and a multitude of activities – the perfect base for a family stay.
A visit to Yosemite had long been on my wish list and I had arrived expecting amazing… but all my expectations were surpassed in a golden wonder.