We had pizza slices from the Arizmendi bakery, and also bought a couple of scones for later and some bread for our Sacramento hosts. It was then a fairly direct drive down Irving Street to 19th Ave. which took us through Golden Gate Park, past the Presidio and onto the famous Golden Gate bridge.
We decided to head to Muir Wood where there is a stand of the tallest trees in the world - the redwoods. These are related to and similar in height to the Tasmanian Eucalyptus Regnans. Unfortunately, there must have been a teddy-bears' picnic, as not only were the off-street car-parks full, but the roadside was fully taken for a couple of miles, which I was not going to be able to walk. So we headed back to the main road and went north to Petaluma. There we had our scones, and a coffee, then decided to drive across to Sonoma, the smaller of the two wine valleys.
At Sonoma we obtained some winery information from the information centre, but decided to just have a coffee instead of sampling some wine, as we were both tired and we still had a drive ahead of us. Pictured is the Sonoma Civic office.
We then headed across to the southern end of the Napa Valley, to reconnect with the I80 from San Francisco to Sacramento. We thought that we would have had plenty of time, but there was gridlock on one of the smaller roads due to roadworks - a road widening which won't be complete until 2013. On the I 80 things started OK, but after a while it stalled due to a bingle in the fast lane (the left-hand one of 5).
We had hired a car with a GPS guide which was very useful once we entered the Sacramento precinct, even though our host had SMSd the instructions it was good to know how far it would be to the required turn-off.
The freeways are amazing, usually at least 4 lanes each way, with on and off-ramps frequently requiring a merge or at least letting some new cars into the mix. It was quite daunting, but not as bad as returning into San Francisco Monday.
In the end we arrived at Jan and Ken's place just after 7 p.m.. We were met by their daughter Kristin who we had met in Sydney about 3 years ago when she was studying some units for her Mechanical Engineering degree. We had some wine and bikkies, and talked about life while we waited for Jan and Ken to arrive home via Las Vegas from a 10-day business trip to the north-east of the country. We eventually went to bed at 12:00, which was 3:00 a.m. to them.
Saturday was a quiet day, with Jan and Sue heading off to run some errands while Ken and I sat around the pool and talked. Their son Nick came over for a while to do some study for a test, as he is hoping to follow his father into assessing. Ken was the Sacramento assessor for many years, retiring just 2 years ago.
Before heading to dinner we went for a walk on the banks of the American River. This was very picturesque. We saw a deer, but no other wildlife. Rattle-snakes have been seen there!
On Saturday evening we headed across town to the home of some friends of Jan and Ken, to launch the friends' new deck which the owner, Duane, had spent the summer building. We were met at the door by Duane's wife Mary, who offered us the choice of Margaritas or Sangria. Another couple were there too, Dale and Darlene, who were wearing little koala clip-ons to make us feel welcome. After an appetizer of quesadillas, we sat at the outdoor setting for dinner - a Mexican themed spread.
After some banter Darlene regaled us with her knowledge of things Australian. After several well-known facts she floored us with "September 3 is Australia's Flag Day, celebrating the raising of the Australian flag after Federation". Neither Sue nor I had heard of it, so no more facts were released. However, we did have some discussion of the various places they had toured and how highly thought-of the Australians' eco-tourism is, especially the tree-top places in the Danetree forest. Mary, the hostess, was the life of the party, with many humorous anecdotes of travels both abroad and in the USA. Nebraska featured prominently in the latter. The party did not go too late, as 4 of them were heading off to San Jose on Sunday to see a Madonna concert - it was on the 'bucket list' of one of the women.
Sunday. We had a quick breakfast then headed off, collecting Kristin on the way. The drive to the Napa took about an hour, then we had to negotiate traffic once in the valley. Our first stop was Ken's favourite - Whitehall Lane ( http://www.whitehalllane.com/ ). We were taken through the vat and barrel areas to a new upstairs tasting room. Our host was reasonably new there, but he had also been employed to run cooking classes. Jan was keen to set up one of those for the group with whom we had partied Saturday night. We had a good tasting of the wines, Sue limiting herself to two samples of white while the other 4 of us sampled the full range of reds.
Jan, Phil, Kristin, Amy - the tour guide
Ken, Phil, Jan, Amy
Kristin, Sue, Jan, Amy, Ken
We then returned to the tasting room where we sat outside in the shade of the verandah and tasted the wines. These were excellent, and Amy was so easy to talk to about the wines. From there we headed back to the town of Napa and the restaurant Angele, where we had dinner ( http://www.angelerestaurant.com/ ). It was a pleasant night, so we sat outside overlooking the river. The menu was French, of course, but the volumes were small with a high quality. Jan drove us home. We had to say our farewell to Jan before going to bed, as she had to rise early for a flight to Las Vegas for a conference. We gave her a book about Lake Eyre and to Ken we gave a bottle of Ronaldson Family Memento, from McClarenvale.
Monday we started leisurely, then left Ken to oversee his renovations. We headed for the River Road, but missed the turn-off (Sue's fault), getting back on track at Walnut Grove.
Sacramento River at Walnut Grove
We continued along the River Road toward Isleton, but made an error and ended up down a dead-end road called Tyler Island Road. This was mostly bitumen, but parts of it were rough as though waves of water had passed under it but it couldn't return to its proper state. Once we were back on track we headed to Antioch, crossing the Joaquin River delta on a massive bridge:
We then headed towards SF on the I4, which progressively became wider and busier. This was the mosdt harrowing part of the driving, as the path we needed merged and evolved from two lanes to about 6. We crossed into SF on the Oakland Bay bridge, which is double decker - the top layer of 5 lanes coming into SF, the lower layer going out.
We eventually made it back to the Studio, unloaded our gear and drove into SF to drop off the car. After returning and unpacking we had a nice Thai meal at Soi Gow on 9th Ave ( http://soigowthai.com/ ).
No comments:
Post a Comment