Calaveras County is crawling with caves

Jay Solmonson, STAFF WRITER

Three decades ago, while camping in Calaveras County, I came across something next to my sleeping bag that has occupied my thoughts ever since. It was a little dispenser of honey-do lists that would become my wife. And we were on our first big date.

Until recently, we hadn't returned for a stay in the county made famous by the Gold Rush and Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Maybe it was because memories of our flea-infested sleeping bags, lousy campfire cooking and cheap wine were still fresh in our minds. So it wasn't haute cuisine, comfortable lodgings or vintage wine that drew us back, although, as we would see, it could have been.

It was the caves.

Calaveras County is crawling with caves. And we spent a weekend crawling through a few of them.

It was a 2 1/2 hour drive from Oakland to our base camp in the Gold Rush town of Murphys. But this base camp was more than basic as we rented a charming and cozy little cottage, one block from Main Street, called the Little Yellow Cottage.

After a wood-fired spinach, caramelized onion and roasted garlic pizza at Firewood on Main Street, we drove south to Moaning Cavern, near the tiny town of Vallecito. The drive was short, but long enough for us to note that Murphys was growing soft around the underbelly, a little like us. Comfortable lodgings, good food and winery tasting rooms lining Main Street were all new to us.

We arrived at the cavern to find out it got its name from early explorers who noticed a distant moaning sound originating from the cave. As we reached the cave's entrance, a 5-by-5-foot hole in the ground, we heard moaning, too. Most likely, they were moans of exhaustion coming from fellow tourists who were climbing up the last of the 234 steps of the cavern's circular metal staircase.

Of course, the moans could have come from the ghosts of the human remains littering the rocky cavern floor. When gold miners discovered the cavern in the mid-1800s, they stumbled across roughly 100 skeletons. The oldest bones are thought to be up to 13,000 years old.

The innocent-looking entrance has done a sinister job of luring its victims to a 165-foot drop to the bottom of the largest known single-chamber cavern in California. It is so large, the Statue of Liberty would comfortably fit inside it.

Today's tourists can safely descend the staircase with a guide for a 45-minute tour. The tour winds through a well lighted, marble passage to the spot where the prehistoric people fell to their deaths. Or where they were thrown to their deaths.

We weren't taking any chances, so we followed behind our tour, which gave us more time to marvel at the rock formations, stalactites dangling from high above, flowstone pouring off the walls and stalagmites shooting up from below.

As neophyte spelunkers, we were stupefied. But unlike Alice jumping down the rabbit hole, we were safely guided by Underground Adventures, which operates tours to several caves in the area. Thinking of what early explorers must have faced, we felt like a couple of sarsaparilla-sipping sissies.

Not so the troop of Boy Scouts from Fremont who choose to rappel to the bottom of the chamber on a rope. While no experience is necessary to do this feat, a little courage helps. Instructions, along with gloves, hard-hats and all the necessary equipment are available for daredevil cavers.

Real cave-lovers can take the three-hour tour that begins with the optional rappel. Cavers then hike and crawl through undeveloped areas where there are no lights, stairs or walkways. Areas with names such as Godzilla's Nostril, the Pancake Squeeze and the Meat Grinder.

The tour ends 300 feet below the surface and is available by reservation for ages 12 and older. Folks we saw returning from the depths -- their borrowed overalls covered with mud from squirming their way through the Earth like a pack of worms on night patrol -- were headed to the showers.

By the time we hiked out, we were ready for a more horizontal cave experience so we took the 45-minute drive from Moaning Cavern to California Caverns, located near an old mining camp called Cave City.

The cavern first opened to visitors shortly after its discovery by a miner in 1850. Between 1859 and 1875, Cave City's residents used the cavern for dances, town meetings and weddings. They even set up a bar on one end and a church on the other.

Underground Adventures offers several tours into the cavern's subterranean rooms. We took the family tour, a 60-minute meander over fairly level, lighted passages and walkways. But if your inner Hobbit is crying to come out, you can take the five-hour Middle Earth Expedition where you get to crawl, wiggle and squirm through claustrophobic passages that connect one chamber to another.

Included in the tour is a stroll through knee-deep mud and a 70- foot rafting trip across a mini lake. Bring along a change of clothes and plenty of stamina.

As we had neither, we left the naturally air-conditioned cave for our cottage in Murphys.

For dinner we sauntered over to Grounds on Main Street where a hip wait staff served us food early prospectors couldn't even dream about. My wife's seafood saut served in a light tomato-wine sauce made us think we were dining in the Bay Area.

Our stroll home included a stop at the Murphys Hotel where a lively saloon evoked every Western movie I've ever seen. Its 19th- century atmosphere remains, although it has been fancied-up a bit and lacked the gold camp excitement of gamblers quarreling their way into a shootout on Main Street. Gone too were the friendly ladies and rot-gut whiskey that a pinch of gold dust could buy.

The hotel, one of California's oldest, first opened its doors in 1856. Mark Twain, who seems to have slept everywhere in the gold country, slept there; as did Ulysses S. Grant and Black Bart, the poetry-writing stagecoach robber.

The front room of the hotel was a ladies parlor where women were expected to wait while their men slaked their thirst at the saloon. Today's women, however, wait for their men on the adjacent barstool.

The hotel and its restaurant still offer comfort to traveling tourists, although a historic hotel wouldn't be worth its creaking floorboards without a ghost story. It seems that a bookkeeper, long after he was shot in the hotel, his body thrown over the balcony, keeps coming around looking for his books.

That was enough for my wife, who wasn't about to wait for me to slake anything.

So we walked out the front door that still bears bullet scars from Murphys' heyday and strolled past the tiny Murphys' Jail, built by its first inmate in 1915.

Early the next morning, I moseyed along the town's empty streets looking for grub. Across the street from the Murphys Hotel, I hit pay dirt. The Rustica bakery was selling cranberry scones fresh from the oven. They were so moist that we fought over the crumbs. And little did we know, it wouldn't be our last fight of the day.

Maybe if I hadn't absent-mindedly been trying to make the 75- minute drive to Volcano in 73 minutes, I wouldn't have come face to face with the law. After signing off on a speeding ticket, courtesy of the CHP, we continued on to our last cave, Black Chasm, located near the tiny Gold Rush town of Volcano.

The chasm, open to visitors since 2000, is a vertical cave with 165 steps down to bottom. The family tour takes about an hour. Before hitting walkways that lead visitors through a maze of stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, draperies and vast arrays of helictite crystals, visitors must descend a steep staircase.

In the Colossal Room, a platform hangs above a 70-foot drop to give cavers a little glimpse of the jewel-like lake below. In the Landmark room, visitors see walls covered with white helictites. They are delicate-looking formations that resemble spun glass. They protrude from the walls, twisting and spiraling their way into a variety of shapes that only a tour guide with too much time in the dark can see. Although after our third cave and his active laser- pointer, we began to see things too.

Who knew dragons lived in caves?

It was obviously time to crawl above ground and drive slowly to lunch.

On the outskirts of Murphys, nestled in the vines, lies Ironstone Vineyards. As we'd spent the morning working up a hunger and thirst, we skipped the tour of the seven-level winery, its extensive wine caves, museum, and outdoor mining exhibit and headed straight for the tasting room. With free tasting, who can blame us? After sipping Ironstone's Obsession Symphony, a slightly sweet and fruity white wine, along with a few others, we ordered portabello mushroom sandwiches from the deli and feasted on the back deck overlooking the vineyards.

We couldn't leave before visiting the 44-pound specimen of crystalline gold on display in the winery's museum, said to be the largest of its type in the world.

We could have spent a lot more time at the winery, but we needed to walk off some of our indulgences so we drove 15 miles east up Highway 4 to Calaveras Big Tree State Park. The namesake of the park are the Giant Sequoias, trees that grow up to 325 feet tall and 24 feet in diameter and are believed to be up to 2,000 years old.

We took the gentle, well-marked North Grove loop trail to view the monsters in all their glory. The hike gave us time to reminisce about our last hike under the canopy of redwoods so many years ago when canned beef stew stood in for dinner at our campsite. Not this time. I'd planned ahead with reservations at Camps, the restaurant at Greenhorn Creek Resort in nearby Angels Camp. (Angels Camp is the town made famous by its jumping frog contest each May.)

Greenhorn is right; it wasn't even in the planning stage last time we were in town. Its spa and golf course had me drooling before I even saw the dinner menu. I went for the medley of seafood and shellfish in a tomato broth, while my wife ordered a blood-rare filet mignon with pine nuts, wilted spinach and garlic whipped potatoes.

The portions must have been sized for hardworking gold miners because we couldn't even entertain the thought of looking at the desert menu. And the view of the golf course had me itching to return for a golfing-buddy trip.

Our last morning, we fought again over the scone droppings, before taking a self-guided walking tour of Murphys, using a guide booklet we'd picked up at the Calaveras Visitors Bureau in Angels Camp.

Murphys was named for its founding brothers, John and Daniel Murphy, who set up a trading post in 1848. It is considered one of the best preserved gold rush era towns in the Mother Lode. And its tree-shaded Main Street has that time-capsule feeling that has been well protected by its 3,000 residents.

Lots of 19th-century homes and businesses remain, but none seem to tell the tale of the wild days of a gold camp like the Buena Vista Cemetery. Perched above town are old tombstones etched with the record of youthful deaths.

But the coarse nature of the miners has been tamed by a more law- abiding society. And thankfully, the days of justice at the end of a rope are long gone. I wish I could say the same for traffic school.

If you go

-Cave tours. For Underground Adventures, http:// www.caverntours.com; (209) 736-2708.

-Accommodations. The Little Yellow Cottage, our two-bedroom, two- bath cozy cottage, a two-minute walk from warm scones or cool beers can be reached at http://www.littleyellowcottage.com or http:// www.murphysvacationrentals.com or by calling Anna Gutierrez at (209) 736-9372.

The Murphys Hotel can be reached at (800) 532-7684 or http:// www.murphyshotel.com.

-Information. The Calaveras Visitors Bureau on the main street of Angels Camp has lots of information about the area. Visit http:// www.gocalaveras.com or call (800) 225-3764.

-Hiking. Calaveras Big Trees State Park can be contacted at (209) 795-2334.

-Camping. For reservations, call (800) 444-PARK, or visit http:// www.bigtrees.org.

-Golfing or dining. Camps restaurants is at Greenhorn Creek golf resort, (888) 736-5900 or http://www.greenhorncreek.com. Other golf courses in the area are: Saddle Creek Resort (800-611-7722; http:// www.saddlecreek.com) and Forest Meadows Golf Course (209-728-3439; http://www.forestmeadows.com).

-Wine. For information about Ironstone Vineyards, visit http:// www.ironstonevineyards.com or call (209) 728-1251. For information on other wineries in the area, call the Calaveras Winegrape Alliance at (866) 806-WINE or visit http://www.CalaverasWines.org.

-Driving. For avoiding a showdown with the local sheriff, drive the speed limit.

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