Spoiler alert for those of you who avoided me on social media all week (which I wouldn't blame you for at all, good call), it was SO fun and perf.
I think I had mentioned, we mulled over a ton of vaycay ideas when we first started planning. We'd never had a full work week off together before (when you include the weekends, it turned out to be like, 11 days!) so we wanted to make it a really adventurous trip. Hawaii? We considered it, as it's only a five-hour (cheap) plane ride from Sac, but we figured we could do Hawaii as old people, if all else failed. Same thoughts on Europe. India was a huge consideration (we found a great deal through a travel company G used previously), but I feared I couldn't get my passport updated in time. Finally, we were like, let's just get in the car and head north. We'll save so much money. And there is SO MUCH north of us -- which is crazy considering Sacramento is pretty far north to begin with. SoCal gets a lot of love and tourism for good reason, but a lot of the NC is untapped. Also harder to access! But people are always recommending weekends in the Anderson Valley, weekends in Mendocino or Fort Bragg, or up to see the coastal Redwoods, or even just like, there are a million little coastal towns that seemingly only a handful of people have ever heard of. So, rather than doing a weekend here or there, we strung together a handful of smaller trips and mashed them into one. Who knows how long we're going to live in Cali, why not do it up? I did all the planning, which I was more than happy about, and it was just like, MAGIC. I did a prettttty good job logically, if I do say so myself. I spent a LOT of time on blogs and Yelp-like sites. #worthit
It's so funny, today was my first day back at work (well, I typed this portion about 11p Monday), and so many of my coworkers were all, "where'd you go?" I told them, and it was insane just how many people who grew up in NorCal hadn't even been to all these spots. Or any of them. Or even HEARD of them.
At the farthest, we were like, 6 hours away (for reference: 40 miles from Crescent City, which is basically where California touches Oregon).
And that's not meant to be a knock on anyone -- it just goes to show how BIG this state is! Truly massive -- maybe 14 hours from top to bottom? I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it.
SO, to rewind: We started the journey last Saturday, and although the original plan was to hit the coast right away, G had a better idea: let's visit this one winery in Napa that's come highly recommended to us that we've never had a chance to try.
Napa isn't really close or far from us. Distance wise, it's not bad -- an hour-ish. But when you factor in traffic and slow tour buses clogging the roads and the fact that we live in Rocklin now ... it can turn into 2 hours pretty easily (or even a tad longer, like if the winery is up a mountain). Second spoiler alert: This winery was up a mountain. We weren't expecting that -- probably should have done our homework. Anyway, no real complaints about Napa's locay, it's just like, you'd assume we'd be there more. But we're not. Plus, paying $20/tasting adds up, and usually it just isn't worth it when we have wineries in our neck of the woods, too. They don't all have Napa's cab, but ...
ANYWAY.
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| #letmetakeaselfie |
We arrived at Pride Mountain Vineyards only about 10-15 minutes late for the appointment, which was impressive considering at one point, we were on pace to be like, a half-hour late. I'm no stickler for punctuality (actually, I could be a lot timelier), but I didn't want to roll in THAT late. Especially if we had a whole group and people waiting on us. We had booked a basic tasting, which included a 45-minute cave tour. (!!!) But yeah, all was well. The wine lived up to the hype, too -- we ended up getting two really nice bottles of Merlot that we're going to sit on for awhile (which we rarely do). Once my traffic headache disappeared and I had some wine sips in my system, it felt like vacation was finally ON.
We hung by the car for a bit afterward, it was a really gorgeous day -- we were up Spring Mountain -- so we nommed some sandos that G made. He's the best at packing us a cooler on roadtrips. He made egg salad sammies and PB&J. We had some bites and were off.
Napa wasn't like, on the way or NOT on the way. It was in the general direction where we were headed. The only bummer part was, going from St. Helena to Gualala required a lot of time on the backroads. Fun discovery: I get car sick! You would too on this monster (that we had to tackle twice!) called ... Mountain View Road? OMG, 25 miles of back and forth and back and forth and VOM.
There was no vom. But I did buy Dramamine just in case.
We arrived to the Point Arena Lighthouse by maybe ... 4p? The fresh air felt nice. It was our first peek at the ocean. But it was the only spot the whole trip that was truly too foggy to take pics. We wandered for a minute before learning the lighthouse was actually closed to the public for the evening. Private event, bummer. We parked somewhere else and still walked the coastline for a few minutes ... and then I decided I had dressed inappropriately and was freezing.
To our hotel we went. And I decided I needed to sleep off my migraine/carsickness before anything else could happen. G was happier than ever just to go wander outside. The place we stayed was tiny, but clean and cute. It was called the Surf Inn, right on the ocean and next to our eventual dinner spot (really good, casual BBQ!)
The Gualala River kind of sits in front of the ocean, which intrigued G to no end. We were all, "Go home, Mother Nature, you're drunk. Who puts a river right next to an ocean?"
I only napped for an hour, then we got dinnz, followed by drinks at a townie bar across the way.
It felt amaz to finally crash at the end of the night, and then to wake up with my carsickness a thing of the past? I've never felt so appreciative.
Until MSU upset Virginia in the tourney! G and I were both so excited, jumping around the room like crazies.
... Until I learned we had to get on Mountain View Road AGAIN on Sunday morning! :( omg whimper.
To be continued. I swear, these won't all be this long!
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