Land of the fruits and nuts

About 15 years ago we decided to go west with some very close friends, Paul Benson and Heather Davis.  Paul and Heather are married but she kept her maiden name, though she uses Benson also.  Paul blamed me for her quirk of individualism since I had kept my maiden name.  Either he didn't know his wife very well, or he just had to find someone to blame, because Heather didn't need any ideas from me.  She gets plenty of independent thoughts on her own.  We were really good friends for many years, but they eventually started a family and our lives went on divergent paths.  Bud still plays pinochle with Paul, Paul's brother Howard (the friend who saved our Bahamas trip), and another friend once a week.  But, we don't get together as a foursome nearly as much as I would like.


I don't know if you have gotten a complete picture of Bud from the remarks I've made about him in other posts, but Bud is a planner.  He keeps our social calendar and makes certain we don't have any conflicts (oh, Heavens what a disaster that would be!).  He factors in his projects with the McLeansville Wildlife Club.  He does not leave room for improvisation or acts of spontaneity.  He's sorta like a walkin' talkin' Daytimer.   And believe me, we are booked months in advance.  I love him for and in spite of this fastidiousness, but I am extremely thankful he doesn't expect me to keep up with any of this bull hockey.   So Bud and Paul set about planning our trip to California.


We were to be gone from Friday night to the following Saturday.  We would fly into San Franciso, pick up our rental van and spend Friday night and all day Saturday in the San Francisco area.  On Sunday morning we would drive casually up the northern coast and then turn east and make our way to Napa Valley, where we would spend Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning.  One of the main purposes of the trip was to see the wineries, vineyards and vintners.  All of us are serious Cabernet Sauvignon drinkers and we were anxious to visit and sample a number of select wineries.   Around mid-day on Wednesday, we planned to drive southeast to Yosemite National Park and stay there Wednesday night and Thursday.  On Thursday night we would drive to Paso Robles to spend the night and Friday morning drive leisurely up the coast, stopping at places of interest along the way.   By Friday night, we would be in Sunnyvale to sleep and back to the San Francisco airport on Saturday morning for the flight home.  Bud and Paul had the entire trip mapped out and hotel reservations confirmed at each of the appropriate locations well before we ever set foot on the first airplane.

All aboard.

We left Greensboro on Friday night as planned and arrived in San Francisco later than originally scheduled.  It was also three hours later according to our body clocks, so we opted to just grab something to eat quickly and go to our hotel room.  To be perfectly honest, I don't even remember if we ate.  It was like 10:00 PM in San Franciso, and that is past my bedtime no matter where my body thinks I am.  Our hotel room was a suite, with two bedrooms on either side of a living room, small kitchen and small dining area.  Once we checked in, I went straight to bed.  Though I am an early to bed type of person, I am also early to rise.  Somehow I seem to  have missed out on the healthy, wealthy and wise stuff.  The next morning I got up, threw open the drapes in the little dining cove and just stood there staring in awe.  There was no fog.  I had read and heard so much about San Franciso fog, but there was not a cloud in the sky nor any fog to be found.  And out our window, framed by the window sill, was Alcatraz.  It was amazing.  After we all had coffee or tea and got dressed, we went out to be tourists.  We rode the trolley, we went to Chinatown, we went to Fisherman's Wharf, we took a tour that took us up to Twin Peaks and down Lombard Street.  I know we ate while we were at Fisherman's Wharf, but for the first time in my life I was not obsessed by food.  Heather is a Vegan and I do remember how great her vegetable and fruit plates looked, and I know I ate crab.  I never go anywhere near water without eating crab.  For dinner we caught a boat to Sausalito and ate at a restaurant overlooking the Bay.  The moonlit ride back across the Bay was sublime, even if you do go past an old spooky prison.  I loved everything about San Francisco except the cost to live there and the fact that the ocean is not particularly warm for swimming.

Nothing but fog all around.

This is one BIG tree!

Sunday morning started out as clear and fogless as Saturday had been.  We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and headed north.  I wanted to stop in Muir Wood, but there were just too many people there, so we kept going.  I was disappointed because I thought that might be my only chance to see giant redwoods.  What a dimwit!  Right around the Muir Wood area we ran into a heavy bank of fog.  So now I knew what all the talk was about -- we couldn't see squat.  But we slowly kept on motoring along.  At one point we pulled off into what was supposed to be a scenic overlook.  We were above cloud level and stood on a precipice looking down into a thick, soupy, impenetrable gloom.  We could hear the waves breaking on the rocks below and the sea birds squawking, but we could not see a thing.  It was more than a little bit eerie.  We drove on and eventually came out of the clouds.  We found a wonderful park with fantastic giant redwoods so we got out and started hiking.  We drove further up the coast and encountered inlets filled with fantastic rock formations and seals and sea lions just laying out enjoying the sun.  We stopped to eat at a quaint little seaside inn with a terrific view of the ocean.  Then we headed out to Napa to prepare for a few days of wine, wine and maybe a little more wine.


In Napa, we didn't really have a plan.  I'm not sure how that happened, but it has to be the first and last time in Bud's life.  We knew which wineries we wanted to see, but weren't sure about whether we would need reservations, and what the hours were at each.  We started out at 9:00 AM at Phelps Vineyards.  They offered us a tasting on the outdoor patio overlooking the growing grapes.  Having been to wine tastings in North Carolina, we expected a small taste.  We were provided with a full goblet of brilliant ruby Cabernet.  A great way to start a day and a sign of the way things were going to be.  I originally had hoped to visit some of the famous Calistoga mud baths, but we just never managed to fit it in.  Over the course of the two days we visited Mondavi, Camus, Sterling, Rutherford Hills, and Inglenook.  We dropped in at Heitz Cellar (my personal favorite) and were treated to an exclusive tour for just the four of us by Kathleen, daughter of the founder Joseph Heitz.  It was a thorough tour from picking in the vineyard, through squeezing, through vatting and fermenting all the way to the bottling line.  She picked up a bottle that was in line to be corked (vintage 1992) and we each drank a glass.  Bud also made arrangements to buy a case of that same wine.   After cellaring it became an outstanding purchase.  We saved the sparkling wine (only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France can rightfully be called champagne) tours for Wednesday morning.  Though we ate lunch while at either Domaine Chandon or Mumms, by then the guys had given up all pretense of remaining sober and ceded possession of the van keys to the women.


Heather drove to our next overnight stop just outside Yosemite.  The men slept most of the way there, so they were raring to go and we took a bottle of sparkling wine to the hot tub after dinner.  We got up the next morning and drove into Yosemite National Park.  We did all the touristy things and saw all the expected sites.  I don't mean for that to sound so blasé, because it was all exceptionally staggering.  El Capitan, Half Dome, Bridal Veil Falls, are unlike anything you will see anywhere else.  There are giant redwoods in Yosemite also, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Unfortunately, it was September and the best time to see all the unbelievable waterfalls is in the spring.  There were still waterfalls, but the amount of water was not nearly as spectacular as during the spring snow melts.  Paul and Heather hiked one of the moderately long trails while Bud and I went exploring for animal life.  After a long day full of adventure and more than a little exertion, we piled in the van and headed for Paso Robles for the night.


The next morning we started back up the coast.  We stopped in San Simeon and toured the Hearst Castle.  Unbelievable!  It's just truly amazing what unlimited amounts of disposable income can do.  San Simeon is also a great spot for whale watching, but again we were there in the wrong season.  We visited Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey and Pebble Beach.  We found astoundingly resplendent vistas everywhere we went.  Near Pebble Beach there is a fairly large rock sticking out of the water, I believe called Bird Island.  The rock appears to be oozing and moving and constantly changing shape.  Fortunately, they have installed one of those telescopic viewers for the curious, and so we discovered though there aren't a tremendous number of birds out there, there are hundreds upon hundreds of sea lions and seals.  During the last part of our voyage up the coast, we passed through Gilroy, California, the Garlic Capital of the World.  It was dark by this point in our trip, but we knew we were approaching Gilroy several miles before we actually got to the city.  I love garlic, but the aroma was overwhelming.  We went on to Sunnyvale and settled in for the night.


Saturday morning we were off to the airport.  Paul and Heather had flown in and were returning on a different airline than we were traveling.  They boarded their plane and headed home.  We approached our gate as our plane was boarding so we immediately got in line.  Unfortunately, the line didn't move.  After standing in line for an hour and a half, they finally asked everyone to go to the counter to make arrangements for a different flight.  So we stood in line at the counter.  The second plane on which we were scheduled to depart also developed a malfunction.  By this time it was too late in the day to fly directly to Greensboro, as the Greensboro airport does not schedule landings after 1:00 AM.  The airline, however, refused to allow us to stay in San Francisco, where the cost of hotel rooms for the entire passenger list would have been astronomical.  They insisted we board a plane headed for Houston and layover there.  We traveled to Houston and were given $10 vouchers for food and a voucher for a hotel room.  I guess they expected us to eat at one of the airport vendor locations, and not one of the better ones either.  Fortunately for us, at that time my sister Cindy lived in Houston.  I called her and she met us at the airport.  There was a lot of confusion about baggage, which the airline at first told us had gone on to Greensboro.  When Bud suggested loudly, vehemently and profanely that it could not have gone on since there were no more flights to Greensboro, the airline reluctantly tracked down all the luggage and made it available for the displaced passengers.  I may have mentioned that Bud does not fly well.  It is incidents just such as this luggage fiasco that set him off and make everyone in the vicinity cringe.  I thought my sister was going to slink down on the floor and crawl out of the airport.  As it was her birthday, and to atone for any embarrassment caused at the airport, we took her out for a birthday dinner (which I can assure you was a bit more expensive than $10).  Then she took us to her home, where we slept comfortably (and free) for the night.  We flew back to Greensboro without incident on Sunday.  I kept the vouchers and sent them back to the airline along with one of my famous sarcastic letters of complaint.  I don't cuss, swear, or threaten. I merely point out the facts in such a way it would be impossible for the reader to avoid feeling incompetent.  The result of my grievance was two vouchers for a free flight to anywhere in the continental U.S.


California is a diverse and interesting state.  It could almost be two states as the southern and northern sections are so completely different; in demographics, in culture, in climate and in terrain.  I'd love to go back again, but this time in the spring.  I want to see the waterfalls in Yosemite at their peak, watch a whale migration and relax in a therapeutic mud bath.