I came across a piece in the LA Times about Moaning Caverns in Gold Country. While not the best cave in California (that honor belongs to summer-only Crystal Cave in Sequoia National Park), a visit here gives an excuse to spend the night in the little town of Murphys, a frozen-in-time Gold Country village.

I spent a night at Murphys Historic Hotel several years ago and remember it more clearly than some of the five-stars I stayed in last month in Dubai. Blame it on the saloon. Like something out of an old western, swinging doors open up to a raucous scene of hard-drinking locals, hunched beneath giant trophy heads on stone walls pock-marked with bullet holes, remnants of shoot-outs from gold rush days. On a Saturday night, when the band plays Jimmy Buffet covers, it’s one of the best places to catch a buzz in all California.

We could’ve chosen one of the nothing-special motel rooms out back, but instead picked room 15, an ‘historic room’ above the bar, because it had a wrought-iron balcony overlooking Main Street. And right down the hall was the room where Ulysses S. Grant once stayed, its Victorian furnishings preserved behind a Plexiglass wall. So kitsch.

Alas, we had to share a bath and the band played till closing, right beneath our room, so we barely got any sleep. But it was worth it in the morning, when we hauled chairs onto the balcony and watched the villagers making their weekend rounds, walking their dogs and trading gossip beneath century-old trees. It was like peering down into a pop-up book of an American fairytale.

Maybe it was my traveling partner’s hangover, but the idea of caving at Moaning Caverns didn’t hold much appeal to us that morning. Instead we took a drive through the undulating hills and got lost on backroads before heading home. Perhaps we’d have been more inspired to explore the caves had we gotten a good night’s sleep between high-thread-count linens at the civilized Dunbar House B&B down the road, but I wouldn’t have had the lasting memory of singing backup to ‘Margaritaville’ with the house band.

—John A. Vlahides