Sonoma County, CA

As I write this we are grieving our sweet lap kitty, Lynx. We had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye last week and it’s been hard. Even though she had multiple chronic problems, we expected to have her for a couple more years. One of the best things about full-time RVing has been traveling with her and we miss her so much.

Back to our stay in Santa Rosa, CA at the beginning of April…

We love California wine country. We’ve visited Napa Valley every time we’ve been to San Francisco. Sonoma was new for us and made for a short travel day. It was just as beautiful, maybe even more because there are also Redwoods groves growing next to the vineyards!

When we pulled into the RV Park at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Michael said “This is the worst place you’ve ever booked”. And, I agreed with him. I didn’t take any photos but it was a gravel parking lot with spaces so tight we just kept our blinds closed all week.

Visiting the wineries in California can cost a small fortune. Since we are budget wine tasters, we had to get creative.

First, we looked for free tastings. The only two that we found were Korbel Winery and Alexander Valley Vineyards. Korbel even gave us a free glass when we arrived a bit too early. Alexander Valley included a cave tour with their tasting.

Our second strategy was calling around to see which wineries would allow us to purchase a bottle to drink on-site instead of doing a tasting. Most will not let you, especially on weekends when they are busy. But during the week, we got lucky with Ferrari-Carano and Chateau St. Jean.

Ferrari-Carano was our favorite winery. It was in the most beautiful appellation area we drove around in Sonoma County – Dry Creek Road, and they let us have the wine on their main patio.

Chateau St Jean made us sit out at their picnic tables and while not the most comfortable, at least we were shaded by Redwoods. In both cases, we packed our own cheese and crackers from Costco.

The third way to spend less on wine is to drink beer instead! Santa Rosa has the very popular Russian River Brewery and an IPA with a cult following called Pliny the Elder. What we didn’t realize was that for two weeks each year they release Pliny the Younger, which coincided with our visit, and there was a massive line at the brewery.

We also visited the cute town of Sonoma. Sonoma has the northernmost Spanish Mission and it’s inside a state historical park with other buildings and a museum. It’s been interesting to learn all the Spanish and later Mexican history of California, which we don’t remember learning in NC schools.

Our plan to move to the Mendocino Coast on Saturday was foiled by the weather. The entire weekend was forecasted to have up to 60mph wind gusts at the coast which we neither wanted to drive in nor park in the oceanfront site we had reserved. We ended up extending our stay at the Sonoma Fairgrounds through the following workweek.

Saturday was also my birthday and we decided to spend the day at the Sonoma Coast. We started out tide-pooling at Pinnacle Gulch Beach. We had read that the sea stars outnumber people 15:1 on this beach. I think it’s more like 150:1. Ochre sea star numbers were declining rapidly a few years ago due to a wasting syndrome but you wouldn’t know it here.

Next, we had a clam chowder and crabcake birthday lunch at the Spud Point Crab Company in Bodega Bay.

After lunch we kept driving north along the coast towards Jenner, through the Sonoma County Coast State Park, stopping to walk along the beaches. We weren’t expecting the black sand beaches and all the rocks in the ocean and were glad we ended up seeing this part of the California coast.

On Sunday, we decided we wanted to go back and explore the coast north of Jenner.

Highway 1 is pretty gnarly in this area and while we saw plenty of RVs traveling this part of the road, we don’t think it would be that fun, and the driver would not get to enjoy the views.

After walking around Salt Point State Park, we headed back home.

Next up, we move north over Easter weekend and take a day trip out to the Mendocino Coast.