Homeward Bound - Day Three

(All these shots and more, except the map, available at flickr.  Map courtesy of Google.)

This last post is shorter, but so was the journey.  After spending the night in Garberville, we needed to get to a train station in Martinez by 3 pm or so.  The fastest way was 200 miles down the 101, which was a regular freeway or at least a major highway for most of the trip.  However, since we had some time and my wandering companion expressed a desire, we cut off the 101 just north of the bay and headed east.

The last of the western frontier.

As I said in the last post, the 101 north of the bay is known as the "Redwood Highway".  It winds through a small valley  in the center of the coastal mountains, past tree-filled hills and small rivers.  In fact, the first hundred and twenty miles or so south of Garberville - itself a barely-there town - have almost no habitation, just small ranches or truck stops here and there.  The first "city" one gets to is Santa Rosa, which is actually the largest town in Sonoma County and one of the largest in the so-called "wine region".

For, indeed, this is where California wines come from.  The trees covering the hillsides gradually give way to vineyards as one crosses into Sonoma County.  98% of the grapes eaten in the US come from California, and most of them come from this region.  We cut east before reaching Santa Rosa and took Highway 128 past areas that should sound familiar to any wine aficionado: Alexander Valley, Calistoga, and eventually to Napa Valley itself.

It was the 49ers who brought grapes to California - a few enterprising individuals decided that it was easier to grown their gold than pan for it.  The first wines were produced for sale in the late 1850s, and it's been going ever since.  This part of California is roughly the same latitude as most of France and of similar climate.  Most kinds of wines are produced here, even sparkling wines that are champagne in everything but name (a thorny legal issue).

In fact, in an interesting bit of history: France uses Californian vines - to a point, anyway.  In the 1800s, speedy transportation across the Atlantic meant more travel, and when California started growing its own varieties of grapes, some of those vines made it back to France.  Unfortunately, along with those vines likely came an aphid that carried a blight.  While it didn't affect the California vines much, it wiped out almost all French vines - until a solution was found, whereby French vines could be grafted onto Californian ones and survive.  To this day, I think there's only one native European vine that, ungrafted, can survive the blight, and it only grows in Greece.

Regardless, the California wine industry is extremely successful, and Napa is its cultural (if not literal) center.

It's also only a short hop from there to Martinez, and the end of this part of the journey.  We arrived at about 2 pm, plenty of time for Mark to catch his train and wander on as well as for me to start the drive home - a pretty bland 400-mile drive down the 5 back to L.A., one that normally takes about 5 or 6 hours but ended up taking over 7 because of construction (ironically at a place called the Grapevine, though that's because of how it winds up the Tehachapis rather than anything to do with actual grapes).

All in all, I think it was a fun trip.  I've been on many parts of these roads before, though in some cases it has literally been almost three decades.

My ulterior motive, though, and even my reason for writing up these "travelogues" as they've been called, is to get across some of the diversity of California.  I love this state - I've lived here all my life - and while I acknowledge the importance of Hollywood and the Silicon Valley to the culture and commerce of both the state and the nation as a whole, there's so much more here that most people - even most Californians - never experience.

In the 80's, there was an old show called "California's Gold" starring Huell Howser, where he wandered around the state finding small, interesting, out-of-the-way spots or sights that most people would never know about.  Part of me would like to reproduce - in a more modern way - some of that on this blog.

I still want to get out to the deserts.  I want to camp in Yosemite and spend a week at Tahoe.  I want to go back to Big Bear and Shasta and really get into the sequoias.  I want to head over to Catalina and the rest of the Channel Islands, to wander down to San Juan Capistrano and walk around the San Diego zoo and wild animal park.

And, yes, I want to go to Europe, and South America, and Africa, and Australia, and scores of other places, but those all take far more planning and longer time than a weekend.  That doesn't mean they won't happen, but it means they'll happen less often.  I hope to do a trip around my state once every month or two - perhaps not to this extent (1400 miles in 3 days is a lot), but maybe.

Anyway, I hope this gives any of you who plan on visiting - or who have been living here for years but never really looked around - some ideas of what's out there.