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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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And so we arrived in Murphys, at about 11 at night. Let´s backtrack a bit. Back in San Fran, the boys had expressed an interest in visiting some wine country, which sounded like a good idea. A quick look on Thorntree advised us that the big ones were not neccessarily the best, and came up with this little gem. And no, I didn´t pick it for the name. Now back to the blog.
We woke up the next morning and went for food in The Peppermint Stick, the pinkest Restaurant I have ever seen. They called us a taxi to Ironstone, one of the wineries in the town. The taximan was called Jason, and was very friendly. Although we didn´t know it at the time, he was about to become one of our best friends in Murphys. At Ironstone, we got a free tour of the winery, which was really interesting. All the grape vines had a small strip of silver paper tied to the top, so when the sun shone on a field of grapes, the appeared to dance in the light, it was lovely. The history of Ironstone, and indeed Murphys itself, dates back to the gold rush. In fact the Ironstone museum houses one of the largest nuggets ever found, if not the largest. This thing was a monster, and worth about $3 dollars. That might be wrong, I can´t really remember. After the tour, we did some free tasting. This went well for us, so we bought a bottle, and took it and four glasses out the the grounds (which were fabulous) and sat drinking our wine and contemplating life. It was nice.
We phoned for a taxi, and Jason turned up. It turns out he´s the only taxi firm in Murphys. We went back into town, and headed for the Twisted Oak tasting place. The girl in there was very friendly, and a bit nuts. Another purchase, and just enough time to catch one more tasting session before they all closed for the day. We asked the girl in there where was good to go out for the night, and she confirmed what everyone else had said - there were only 2 bars, the Nugget and the Hotel bar. Don´t go to the Nugget. She also confirmed my suspicion that we were likely to meet the whole town in the Hotel bar. What a cool town. We called into the deli to buy some food, then headed back to the Motel to sit by the pool and consume our purchases. I suppose it was silly of my to suggest that the boys throw Nikki in the pool, I was always going to end up in there too. So yes, the boys threw us both in. I suppose it was silly of Mike to try to avoid being thrown in by jumpin in himself - with his money belt, which contained his passport, among other things, still on. Oh well, it was a good laugh. We all headed back upstairs to shower and change, and headed out.
It turned out the Nugget was just around the corner from our Motel. We figured it couldn´t be that bad, so we headed in for one or two. After that, we wandered down the main street (kinda the only street) to Murphys Hotel Saloon. We got chatting some lads who were on a pretty lame stag do, but it wásn´t a great bar. And then Jason came in! He took us to a Sicilian Restaurant that was due to open that week, and we had a beer there with him and some of his mates - one of whom was the Twisted Oak girl. We all went back to ´Le Nuget´ (French stylee) as Jason liked to call it, and had a pretty messy night! Rick told the Twisted Oak girl that she was our Murphys mascot and she nearly cried!
The next day Nikki wasn´t able to move, so we decided to stay another night. Mike and I got up and headed out to the outdoor pool, me cause I wanted to and him because he thought it would cure his hangover. It was really nice, the weather was roasting, and the pool was really cold. Rick showed up an hour or so later with massive smoothies, yum. We just lay about reading by the pool till the early afternoon. We showered and then Mike, Rick and I headed into town for some food. On the way back, we called into Twisted Oak girl for a few sneaky tasters. Back to the Motel where we just lounged about, watched some tele, and went to bed.
The next morning we checked out and went for breakfast. Before setting off on the road though, we headed back up to Ironstone to meet Mario, who, for $8 would show us how to pan for gold. It was really cool, and I managed to find quite a few sizable nuggets. I think I had about $20 worth in total. Not bad for an hour´s gold panning. Mario was pretty good at it though, he had a $1500 piece around his neck. Not any kind of pretty jewelry mind you, just a nugget of gold. To be honest, it looked a bit rubbish, as necklaces go.
After that, we drove up the road to Big Tree National Park, and had a quick walk round to see redwoods. They were pretty cool. And big.
Click here for all the Murphys photos.
previous travel blog entry
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