It was a month ago, to the day, that Lea and I had unexpectedly arrived in Sonoma for our weekend getaway to Big Sur.  After a day of rekindling our love affair with Northern California among the vines in wine country, there were only two more things we had to do since we had come this far.  The first – go for a walk in the woods.  Or, more specifically…the redwoods.

In our three years in the Bay Area and seemingly thousands of miles through Northern CA’s coastal redwoods, we had some how managed to never step foot inside Muir Woods National Park (possibly the most well-known and accessible redwood forest in the Bay Area).  This park had also made our California bucket list; which means that we would get to cross our second item off the list in one weekend!

The entrance of the park is pretty breathtaking, but also a little crowded.  Down along the creek bed is a boardwalk perfectly suited for strollers, walkers and even high heels.  Again, it’s gorgeous, but we just weren’t getting that “back to nature” vibe we were looking for.  So we took our escape up the first side trail that we could find.  These trails were muddy and steep, so we weren’t surprised when the crowd thinned out real quick.

Ahhhhhhh…ferns!  I absolutely love it here.  This is one of those posts when I’m just gonna shut up and let the pictures do the talking.

 

You know you’ve been in California too long when you start taking tree hugging to the next level. J/K!  I think it’s sweet.  My, how far we’ve come since Nueva York…  :)

 

 

As we crested the ridge line and passed over to the western side of the mountain, the trees thinned and we were met with beautiful, clear views of the ocean.  That’s when it really hit us and felt like Northern CA kids again!

 

The trails on this side were soppin’ wet.

 

 

 

After our walk, we went on to the second thing we had to do since we were back in S.F.  Tony’s Pizza Napoletana.

 

 

 

And this time we got to sit in the main dining room!  Of all the times we’ve been here, we’ve never been sat in the other room and have always been curious.  Nay, suspicious.  It has a good view of the pizza oven, but I think I actually prefer the room with the view of the bar.

 

 

 

By 4pm, we were on the road again.  6.5 hours of this view.  Not bad, California.

 

Filed under: Great Outdoors, Wine & Food
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So, when we left off last time, Lea and I had just finished a 9 hour drive looking for a place to lay down for the night and had finally found one in Sonoma, about 200 miles north of where we had planned. I will say, it was well worth the trip.  Lea and I had never been to the town square in Sonoma, so we ended up ticking one off the bucket list, after all.  For breakfast, Jared recommended Sunflower Caffe as “the” cafe on the square (looked like there were some other contenders on the block).

I got a breakfast parfait that substituted yogurt for kefir (think Sutherland), which was similar to yogurt, but runnier.  Anyway, I’d never heard of it so thought it was worth a mention.

Around this time, Lea had also confirmed that even though the place in Big Sur was holding the room that we couldn’t get to, they wouldn’t charge us.  In fact, we re-booked for Memorial Day Weekend and they comped us a night.  It all worked out in the end!

As I was working on getting out an earlier blog post, I told these two knuckleheads to go for a walk around the square so I could get some peace and quiet.  They came back with a couple nice pictures.

After breakfast, we decided that today would be perfect for some wine tasting.  While JP was freshening up I took a few pictures of the place he, I mean we, were house sitting.  It’s really modern inside, and sits on a massive lot.

Some of the more notable features of the house include these massive grape vines that look like dinosaur fossils, and…this super refreshing outdoor shower!  Say “hi” Jerry!   He’s such a good sport.

Once he was finally done rinse-wash-repeating, we finally got out of the house and on to our first stop of the day at Gundlach Bundschu.  It’s spelled just like it sounds.  OK, maybe not.  But this helps…(hint: the third item is a “bun”).

It’s been a while since I’ve been so floored by the nose on a wine.  They had a Gewurz’ that screamed passion fruit.  OMG…  And a pinot that smelled like I had just dunked my head in strawberry jam.  These are good things.  At least for me, anyway.

 

Outside we noticed these adirondack chairs made completely of barrel staves.  This is exactly the kind of inspiration I was looking for when we had about 150 staves lying around.  Instead, we now have 150 candle holders.  Which reminds me – let me know if you want a barrel stave with holes notched out for tea lights.  We have some.

A peak inside the cave…

One down, one to go.  One of the best known wineries in all of wine country that we had somehow never paid a visit to before is Chateau St. Jean.  So we made a dash across the valley to check it out.

 

Here she is – Chateau St. Jean.  Nestled up in a comfy little spot at the base of the hill.

 

This was a big departure from the family owned winery of our last stop.  The grounds were very impressive.

 

 

JP knows his way around this place.  St. Jean is one of the brands in his company’s portfolio so he’s been here a time or twenty.

After making our way through the tasting list, we decided to pop a squat (or is it “squat a pop” Wise and Crawford?) in the main tasting room for some charcuterie and a couple glasses of the reserve pinot.  Nice, even pours, Jerry.  I’m drinking the non-reserve version of this as I type this, by the way.

At the tail end of this stop, my folks made the mistake of calling us.  I think we kept them on the phone for 1.5 hours.  We were all a little bushed from the long night before, so decided it would be wise for a nap before dinner.  Lea was the only one who got one.  We had seen a place earlier in the day called Hopmonk Tavern and I knew that if this was to be our one day in Sonoma, I had to go to here.  They had beers on tap that are hard to find in the open market.  We had three:

1. I started with a Duchesse, which my boy Lampe had recently introduced me to.  As far as sour ales go, this one is pretty sweet and tangy.  We ended up splitting it between us and a few new friends sitting at the bar next to us.
2. JP requested a Russian River Blind Pig IPA.  Lampe – you salivating, yet?
3. I ended up tasting a few nips before settling on the Goose Island Matilda Belgian IPA.  One of my new favorites.

 

M’lady’s birthday is April 7, so even though it was a bit early, JP took us out for a birthday dinner at El Dorado Kitchen in the El Dorado Hotel.  It was fantastic, and I know Jared has pictures that I don’t have.  Like we do at most places, we stayed until the staff started turning chairs over the tables and vacuuming.  What a day.  The best part?  None of us saw it coming!  Spoiler alert: tomorrow we pay a visit to some very “old” friends.

Filed under: Family & Friends, Travel, Wine & Food
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Lea and I recently started a formal bucket list. One for things we want to see and do around the world, and one specific to California.  At the top of our CA bucket list is a trip to Big Sur.  For months, we’ve been planning our trip, and it’s been the only topic of conversation in our house this past week.  I had all of our unnecessarily high-tech hiking gear packed up and ready to answer the call of the wild.

Since accommodations are sparse in Big Sur and Lea is vehemently opposed to camping, JP recommended we stay at Glen Oaks Big Sur.  Six unique and modern, yet cozy, cabins. When Lea called Thursday morning to confirm a late check-in, to our delight, we had been upgraded to a bigger unit…with a fireplace!  Everything was just falling perfectly into place.

On Friday night we hit the road at 7pm, with a target arrival into Big Sur by 1am Saturday morning.  The GPS routed us to approach Big Sur form the North via Highway 1.  As we were coming into Carmel, we saw a traffic sign, “Highway 1 Closed 21 Miles Ahead”.  Apparently, mudslides from all the recent rain cut off our access just eight miles before our destination.  As Lea was searching for an alternate route we were suddenly pulled over by the po-lice.  ”For what?” you may ask.  They never said, and apparently you can’t get a ticket for that, but they did give us a helpful bit of information.  Highway 1 is closed from the north and south; “Big Sur is currently an island.”

Lea called the hotel manager to confirm, and he reassured us that he was still holding our reservation.   We asked, “Is there a way to get there from where we are now?”  His response, “No, the road is closed north and south of us, but we’re still holding your reservation.”  Us, “Great!  We’ll be right there!”

By this point it was 12:30am, and with no where else to go, 2.5 hours later we were in San Francisco knock, knock, knocking on Jerry’s door!  But Jerry wasn’t home.  He was house sitting for a friend in Sonoma.  So on we went.  By 4am we we finally reached some place to lay our sleepy heads.  Looks like it’s Sonoma for the weekend.  Right on!

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