Like the Murphys

Me at a vineyard
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Murphys was a bit of a late addition to our North America tour, originally we had planned to go to Yosemite National Park, however our schedule meant we'd be arriving around the US Labour Day Holiday. This meant the park would be very busy and we would struggle to find anyplace to stay. We decided instead to go on a tour of wine country, 'Sideways' style.

Patrice did some researching on where was best to go and stumbled across Murphys. After being satisfied she hadn't simply chosen it based on the obvious Irish link we headed off there.

Cheers!
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Murphys was voted America's #2 coolest small town (pipped to the #1 spot by Barnard, Vermont if you're interested) and it certainly was cool. It's a quaint little town out in the middle of nowhere that began as a gold mining town back in the times of the gold rush. Now it's a thriving wine town with numerous vineyards producing some great wines.

The first day we headed off for some food to a so-kitch-its-cool pink diner full of pink chintzy crap and bizarre americana everywhere. The girls loved it. The food was great and after our feed we called a taxi to take us the main vineyard, Ironstone.

oo, hold on a think I'm still wearing my ....
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The tour was pretty interesting and the vineyard and grounds are really beautiful. I was somewhat apprehsive about the tasting afterwards as I'd overhead some pretty pretentious crap from some other tasters while we were waiting for the tour to start. Thankfully our pourer had pretty much sussed us out as newbies and didn't try to engage us too much in enthusing about woody overtones or bombastic finishes. We still felt a bit awkward and just politely sipped then turned to each other and said things like "mmm, that's ... nice".

DSCF0403
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Following the advice of our friendly cabby, we bought a bottle of wine and took it out into the ground of the vineyard to sup some wine in the sun and take in the fine surroundings.

Wine finished, we called for a Taxi back to town, we ended up with the same guy, Jason. This isn't so weird as it turns out he's the only taxi driver in the whole town. He dropped us off at another vineyard called Twisted Oak, started by a couple of IT geeks who made it big in the 90s IT boom and got out before it all went bust. Their wines are named in a no nonsense rebelious fashion - their highest calibre and best selling wine was called simply "The F%&king S#!t". After sampling their fine range there was just enough time before closing to fit one more vineyard across the road. We bought some fine meats and pate at a deli and took another bottle of wine back to our hotel so we could sit by the pool and enjoy a civilised dinner. Unfortunatley, a day's worth of wine drinking rarely leads to a civilised anything and no sooner was the final bottle finished than we were pushing each other in the swimming pool, fully clothed. Being somewhat of a instigater, I understood it was inevitable I would end up in there myself, so I careful removed my pocket of wallets, cameras, money, tissues, etc and jumped in myself... only to discover I was still wearing my moneybelt with my passport, tickets, usb drive, etc in. I'm one smart cookie.

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That evening we headed to the only two bars in the whole of Murphys and met pretty much the whole town, including our cabbie Jason! After numerous drinks, Jason took us to a Sicilian resturant owned by a friend that was due to open in a few days for some more drinks and to meet up with more of the faces we'd met during the days wine tasting. Walking home, we were thankful, if at the time somewhat dissappointed, to find the pool locked.

The next day was spent largely doing nothing.

On our final day, we headed back to the Ironstone winery to meet up with Mario, an old school gold prospector who, for $8 an hour, would show you how to pan for gold and let you take home what you found! It was great fun, and it's easy to see how so many people got caught up with gold fever, the delight you get from finding your first grain of gold is pretty great! Mario showed us some of the nuggets he'd collected from the river in the past week, they were pretty sizable and worth a couple of hundred bucks each. He also proudy wore his biggest find around his neck, a $1,500 nugget of gold the size of a walnut! Leaving Mario robbed, bleeding and unconcious we skipped off to our next destination safe in the knowledge we had enough gold to see us through the rest of America! Hurrah!

Gold! Gold I tells ya! And it's all mine!
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OK, we didn't, Mario was too nice. Instead we proudly took our piteful crumbs of gold as souveniers and headed off to Tall Trees Park. It's a giant giant Redwood park (both the redwoods and the park are giant) about 20 minutes outside of Murphy's. We only had time for a fleeting visit but it was well worth the stop. They weren't lying about the trees, they were indeed very tall.

More Murphys pictures here:

Murphys Pics

Nikki in pink resturant heaven
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