Feeling refreshed and appropriately touristy, I set out again, this time to Dun Morogh, home of the Dwarven city of Ironforge. Ironforge is an impressive sight on its own, with its labyrinthine underground chambers, vaulted ceilings and massive fiery lava forge cascading down from the ceiling. You could pick up multiple types of Dwarven beer in the various inns, a fact that endeared the place to me immediately, despite the lack of any ski lifts. Among other things, I uncovered a recipe for beer-basted boar ribs that frankly made me regret that the world was digital.

Passing through Dun Morogh involves dodging countless bears, wolves, mountain boars, several foul-tempered yeti and some ugly pot-bellied troggs, who frankly would have fit quite well as members of the Westfall Beach Club. Spectacular as the scenery was, I elected to pass through after I spotted a sign pointing the way to someplace called Loch Moden, which sounded like a terrific venue for a nice lakeside cottage. Or possibly the location for a nice slasher movie. Given the inhabitants of most of the rest of the region, the slasher movie seemed more probable.

After picking my way past a very irate bear and a small troop of what resembled Neanderthal bobbleheads (commonly called troggs), I arrived at a small unprepossessing Dwarven town carved out of a narrow forested valley. Beyond the town was a set of small hills, populated with the requisite amount of appropriately poisonous vicious forest spiders (why a forest full of helpless, weak herbivores or hapless squirrels is so hard to find, I couldn’t say) and a vividly blue, shockingly pristine lake. All that was missing was a rickety dock to fish off. The thought was barely out of my head when I spotted, less than 50 digital feet away, the appropriate rickety dock.

I swung the camera around, taking in the view. Mountains faded into the distance, tall pines reached skyward, while a lambent sun sank slowly in the west, tingeing the clouds with flame. For the moment, the eternal strife of the World of Warcraft sank into the distance and by the slow, quiet blue of the lake, there was nothing but utter satisfaction at finding this place.

I was a born digital tourist, a turista in Kalimdor.

Now if I only had a fishing pole.