One in particular that I hope to attend is the 28th Sierra Storytelling Festival, July 19-21, 2013. It is held at the North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center, in Nevada City, (530) 265-2826; www.sierrastorytellingfestival.org.
For those interested in learning more about the gold rush era a visit to the Miners Foundry Cultural Center is a must. Tour the inside of the building and see some of the equipment manufactured for gold mining.
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| Ore Car at the Miners Foundry Cultural Center |
If you wish to experience first hand the affect of strip mining on the land visit the Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. It's the sight of California's largest "hydraulic" mine where the foothills were carved away by a torrent of water. On the plus side, the park offers a variety of hiking and mountain biking trails, and a small mountain lake for swimming and fishing.
For a town of under 5,000 population, Nevada City has an amazing amount of really good choices for dining. We previously mentioned the Broad St. Bistro & Gallery as a great spot for coffee and pastry among other things. On our travels throughout the town, we had many recommendations given to us by the locals. One name mentioned quite often was the New Moon Cafe.
Any time I see a salad on a menu that has beets and goat cheese included...I'm there! Their version was a pickled beet salad with chevre, hazelnuts & grilled Belgian endive over mache with crumbled bacon...yumm.
I appreciated their use of organic lettuces and vegetables as well as sustainable meat products from Niman Ranch. A little pricey but definitely worth a visit.
As our tour of Nevada City was winding down, we decided to "kill two birds with one stone" for dinner. We visited the Ol' Republic Brewery, 124 Argall Way. www.olrepublicbrewery.com. The brewery doesn't serve food but it is conveniently located across the street from another restaurant that came highly recommended by the locals, Jernigan's Tap House & Grill, 123 Argall Way. http://jernigansgrill.com.
Turned out to be a brilliant move! We ordered a sampler round of beer and looked at a copy of Jernigan's menu conveniently located across the street. We settled on the Bourbon Hill Tri-Tip Sandwich Niman Ranch; BBQ tri-tip, greens, caramelized onions, jack cheese, and chipotle barbecue sauce on a ciabatta roll, and the Piety Hill Pulled Pork Sandwich with slow-cooked pulled pork & chipotle beer-BBQ sauce.
My wife and I both ordered fries, which as soon as I saw them had me wishing I had ordered the yamm fries with black lava salt. The fries had a "brackish" color to them as if the deep fryer oil hadn't been changed in...a while. It got worse. They were limp and soggy as well. Lunch had long since past and dinner hadn't yet started...these fries had been sitting for some time...lucky us.
The Pulled Pork sandwich was excellent, but the Tri-Tip required strong dentures for my wife. Did I mention the beer was great? My wife really enjoyed the Dead Canary (German Blond Lager) which is a lighter-style lager. I enjoyed the Bavarian Black Lager which had a hint of coffee, and the English Pale Ale. It was nice to see a brewery doing lagers as most breweries stick with ales.
I guess the best thing I can say about a town is that I left wishing I could stay there longer. For a town of its size it has a lot going on and had a wonderful "vibe". I didn't have time to do any wine tasting this time and their are several wine tasting venues around town featuring local wines. Next time.
With only one day to visit, I felt life we just scratched the surface. Hopefully I have perked your interest as Nevada City is well worth checking out! Next we'll been heading south on Hwy. 49 to the town of Grass Valley! Ciao for now.
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| Nevada City Winery tasting room. |
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