Nevada City, Gold-Rush Town

On Saturday, Andrew and I hopped in the car and headed into the Sierra Nevada foothills to explore a few old Gold Rush towns. First stop: Grass Valley, with a small Main Street and a surprising number of small bookstores. After a quick stroll, we continued on to Nevada City. Here we struck gold, so to speak (what a terrible, terrible, though inevitable pun), with a charming downtown full of shops and restaurants; most of the buildings dated from the 1800s and had been charmingly restored. The town was bustling, the streets and cafes crowded, though we’re not sure if it’s usually like this or if the crowds were there for the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival that was taking place. We had lunch at Lefty’s, a cute gourmet burger place with a pressed-tin ceiling and exposed brick walls; we could have been in Park Slope. After lunch, we explored some of the residential streets, full of cute Victorians and lots of trees.

We made a tentative gesture toward living in Nevada City by inquiring about an apartment for rent on the main street (it sounds wonderful), and chatting briefly with a realtor; but when we got home and assessed our apartment with a cold eye, the idea of packing up and moving again proved to be, as Andrew said, “revolting.” We shall see. It’s on the radar. Once summer once again descends with its oppressive heat, we may feel more enthusiastic about moving on.