September US adventure, Pt 3: California and back

The rest of the trip was a blur. Partially due to the nature of wine-tasting, where you're constantly maintaining a buzz throughout the day, and partially because there was so much damn driving!

From Oregon coast to wine-country in California was a day-long trip. The second we left the coastal area and headed back to the No. 5, Summer greeted us with a vengeance. California was in excess of 30-degrees, and humid! Luckily (?) we spent most of the day in the air-conditioned car.

(playing frisbee at a rest stop)

The next two days we spent touring the valleys of the Sonoma/Napa area. The first day was spent in the Russian River valley, and we had the good fortune of randomly beginning at Lancaster Estate. The entrance read 'by appointment only' so we decided to just take our own tour of the elegant property. We parked at the house and to our surprise, an enthusiastic woman, by the name of Sheila, came bounding out to welcome us. Before we knew it she had introduced us to the Sales Manager, Jason, who swept us off on an hour-long tour of the winery, including the crops, and the cave. We finished off the tour with three generous glasses of their Cabernet Sauvignon, each of indecipherably increasing quality.

We saw a modest 4 wineries in total that day. But that was just the warm-up round for Sonoma, which we toured Thursday, and hit at least twice that. Tasted lots of good wine, but disappointingly Sonoma is becoming more commercialized that its reputation had us believe, and it's actually a rarity to find a free tasting since most places now charge you $5.

In order to enjoy the ride home and not be frantically rushed on our last day (though we still were in the end), we decided to spend our remaining three days leisurely working our way North via the coast.

Friday, our travels took us through the Redwood forests of California, where we got sucked into a number of tourist traps, including 'Confusion Hill' (featuring a house built on an angle which 'defies gravity'. Don't know what to be confused about; it's crooked!), and a giant Paul Bunyan statue that laughed when I knocked on its 12-ft tall shoe.

We camped in Elk Valley, in a site that was right beside an elk breeding ground. The campsite is actually built around this meadow that the elk spend most of their year in, and it was really neat to get so close to these animals.

After another long day in the car, we made it a good chunk of the way back up Oregon. That night we treated ourselves to a fancy seafood dinner, to end our trip on a high-note.

Sunday was another jam-packed exciting day driving down the highway, and then we were home again...

Phew! Overall, it was a ton of driving in a very short amount of time, but still a great trip with Bryanna (thanks, Bry!)