Napa Valley to the Coastal Redwoods

Bothe-Napa State Park has an umbrella of trees like the live oaks at Hunting island or Edisto Island. The sites are lush, private, and relaxing. Its a great place to hide for a few days, and it’s also an excellent base to explore the north valley.

This visit we discovered much more about the smaller vineyards off the beaten path, even as we spent the appropriate amount of downtown time in Calistoga, St. Helena and Sonoma.

As always Jennifer, with me as her rather unreliable sou chef, prepared some amazing meals, mostly with beans.

We ate once at a place called The Farmstead, and she used that to come up with a new recipe or two based on their menu. As we eat ourselves across the country Jennifer continues to refine our serving dishes and kitchen utensils to emulate the best of what we’ve found. It goes without saying that our visit to the original Williams Sonoma store was classic shopping drama.

As we left Calistoga going north the scenery just gets better through the Alexander Valley and down the Els River to Eureka and into the Coastal Redwood forest that seem to cover most of California. Our stop this time is outside Crescent City CA, among the monster redwoods along the Smith River.

The coast along Crescent City is astounding as well. This is the town that was wiped out by a tsunami in 1964 after the big quake in Anchorage. The lighthouse withstood the whole thing.