Napa Valley

Where we last left off we had just left the state of Oregon, and were driving through california towards Napa Valley. To be more precise, towards Rohnert Park.  Yes, i’ve never heard of it either.  but it was close to Napa, and there was a nice hotel we found.  anyways, we got in late, at around 8 or 9, after having driven all day.  by the time we arrived we were famished, and decided to visit In and Out burger, which was about 1.5km away from us.  since we had driven all day, we decided to walk there, and joked that we are probably the only people that have ever walked to In and Out.

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Now, let’s discuss Napa.  i think we were staying in Sonoma valley, and napa valley was the next one over heading away from the coast.  all these valleys are separated by mountain ranges that do not have roads over them.  instead you have to drive towards the bottom or the tops of the valley, and drive all the way along them in order to visit the towns you want to see.  below was a model i found at an info center that shows this very clearly.

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Now the good thing about that was the following morning, we woke up and planned out a route that went from where were were staying and took us south and over into the actual city of Napa, and then we would head north up the valley for lunch.  we would end the day driving all they way up and coming back down towards where we were staying.  so having a plan in mind, off we went!

The first place we stopped was a real nice public market in Napa.  a few days a week they have farmers markets there too, but not today.  we wandered around, and i found a nice little boutique chinese tea vendor.  so i sat and had some Puer for the first time in a long time.  while drinking we talked to the sales person and he told us about some cool wineries around that he liked.

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after that we wandered around the city.  Napa is where Morimoto has one of his restaurants.

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Noa snagged us a table at Bottega to have lunch, another well known restaurant.  All these fancy restaurants are in a city called Yountville, which i personally had never heard of, but apparently its quite famous.

so after leaving Napa, off we drove to Yountville.

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lunch at Bottega was amazing.  i did not feel like i should be taking photos there, so i didn’t, but we had a very enjoyable dining experience and really good food, wine and service!  after that we walked around a bit, and found the French laundry restaurant.

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now one of the reasons its so famous is they grow a lot of their own food for the restaurant, and i think it was one of the first to offer really local and seasonal food.  this was a map of their garden plot, and their actual gardens.  they are open to the public, and you can wander around them.  and did i mention they are across the street from the actual restaurant.  pretty amazing.

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we also stumbled upon Bouchon, where we were very excited to try the bakery.  and then found out that out of the whole year, this is the one the staff decided to have their staff meeting.  BOO!  so no tasty bakery stuff for us!

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now did i also mention that IT WAS STINKIN HOT in napa?  after having frozen our butts off in Oregon, it was so nice to be walking around in shorts again.  so we were having  good time just walking around and seeing the town.  what i really liked is they had some grape vines right there, so that people could walk around and take pictures if they wanted , which i did.

vineyards

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Having had our fill of yountville, we kept driving north towards St Helena.  everywhere you drive by the way, you see nothing but grape vines, and vineyards.  they are literally everywhere.  it’s totally crazy.  So anyways, we were driving north and our target was called the Clif Family Winery.  we drove through St Helena to have a look, and then found the winery.  Noa had heard they sell really good meyer lemon jam, and we also found plum jam there that we got.  But what they are actually known for, which we had no idea about, but really should have, was that the owners are the inventors of the Clif Bar.  And the reason they invented the clif bar is that they are a family of bikers, and needed something to fuel themselves on long bike rides.  on the side they also produce wine, i guess!  Their tasting room was really cool, and they had bikes all over the place.  It made me wish i had some of our biker friends like Will or Goosen with us.

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St Helena train tracks.

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As we were leaving St Helena driving North, we pulled over at the Giant Sized welcome to napa sign.  i guess we did the trip in reverse….

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We also pulled over at some point to get a picture of the HWY 101 sign, which was the highway we ended up driving all the way down from Northern Oregon to San Fran.

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That evening, we decided to go to Lagunitas brewery so that i could have some beer there.  Amongst rogue, deschutes, driftwood  and dogfish head, its for sure one of my favourites. as we were very close to petaluma, we decided to go for a quick visit.

now, its located in an industrial park in petaluma, and the brewery is actually on site.  right next to the brewery they have their tap room, and even a small stage for performances and stuff.  we went about an hour before closing, and it was a very lively spot.  if i lived close by, i could see myself coming quite a bit.

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of course i was there to try ipa’s.  i have had their little sumpin’ sumpin’ ale, and its great.  i’ve also had hop stoopid, which is wonderful.  so i just asked for a sampler of four ipa’s, and this is what i got.  it was their run of the mill IPA, an imperial IPA, hop stoopid, and one called galaxy.  the galaxy was closer to the 120 minute dogfish head, so quite sweet, a little over the top.  the regular IPA was fine, but the imperial and hop stoopid were still my favorites.  sadly we did not have a lot of time to try more beers, there looked like so many good ones you can only get at the tap bar.  i shall go back with some day, hopefully with dan or aaron  or anyone that wants to drink beers with me for that matter.

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driving home, we got rewarded with a beautiful sunset after a very action packed day.

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Overall we had a wonderful day in Napa, and we certainly learned a lot.  we did no winery tours, as most need at least 24h notice, and almost all cost between 20-60 dollars a person.  also, if you’re going to really enjoy yourself, you should hire a car/van to drive you or a group of you around.  who’s going to spend that money at a winery, and then not drink because they have to drive.  so i think it was a great day, a really good fact finding trip, and we are set now if we ever do go back, which would be wonderful.  there was still some much left unexplored, and there are a lot of beautiful hikes we had to give up due to the problem of not enough time.