Travel

January – A Weekend of Wine Tasting in the Anderson Valley
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January – A Weekend of Wine Tasting in the Anderson Valley

The Anderson Valley wine region of California is not as well known as Sonoma or Napa. However, unlike those regions, it is less crowded and has a more rural and relaxed feel. The weather is cooler in the evening because of the surrounding hills and the proximity to the coast, however day time temperatures can reach into the 90’s F during the summer. Because of this contrast of cool night and hot daytime temperatures, Anderson Valley specializes in different grape varieties than Napa and Sonoma. Pinot Noir and Alsatian grapes are king.

We frequently travel through the valley to and from the Bay Area but, we don’t stop to taste. The 50 mile road from the valley to the coast, through the Navarro River redwoods, is beautiful but very curvy. It’s not safe to drive after a glass or two of wine.

We decided to have a late anniversary weekend in the valley. It’s not crowded in the winter, but reservations for most tastings and restaurants are recommended.

It’s been a dry January after a very wet December. We saw signs of spring everywhere and the brown hills of summer were all green.

Our first stop was to Toulouse Vineyards. Their tasting room is at the top of the hill with a gorgeous view of the valley floor. We recommend their rose, it’s our favorite.

Toulouse Vineyards

Toulouse Vineyards

We made a quick (unannounced but they let us in to taste) visit to the Baxter tasting room in Philo. Their Pinot Noir is a favorite of a good friend and we had not been there before.

Toulouse Vineyards

Baxter Vineyards

It’s a small world because the gentleman pouring the wines was an actor we had seen before in productions of the Mendocino Theater Company. We had a nice chat along with their excellent Pinot Noir. We also liked their chardonnay which we hadn’t tasted before.

From there we proceeded to our hotel in Philo, The Madrones.

 

Our room was called The Perch and felt like a tree house high in the branches of the redwoods surrounding the property. We did have to climb the spiral staircase to the top, but it was worth it.

Dinner that night was at a new place in Philo, Jumbo’s Win Win, which recently opened. It was similar to an old fashioned diner and hopping on a Friday night.

The restaurant at The Madrones was closed during January, so we ended up at the Boonville General Store  in nearby Boonville the next morning for breakfast..

My husband opted for a hand pie while I had something more traditional.

After breakfast hiking at nearby Hendy Woods was on the scheddule. We hadn’t been there before and they have a number of original redwoods.

Although logging was (and is) big business in the Redwoods, in 1853 Joshua Hendy (who owned the forest) chose to leave some areas untouched. By 1938, local people, particularly the Unity Club, were working with Save the Redwoods League to keep the big trees safe. Then in 1958, the State of California bought the groves from a timber company and created the park which opened in 1963. There are areas for camping and some small cabins to rent.

I think the burls look like a creature attempting to emerge from the tree. Lord of the Rings stuff.

Redwood Burls

Handley Vineyards was the first tasting of the day.

Their tasting room is one of the nicest in the valley, full of items the owners had collected during their world travels. I am partial to their Petite Sirah and discovered they have a wonderful sparkling wine and some Rhone style reds.

Lichen Vineyards

Lichen Estate

Lichen was next, they specialize in French style sparkling wines and lighter whites. This is a very small vineyard where a reservation is a necessity. Reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle were there at the same time, I look forward to reading their story in the paper.

Dinner was at The Boonville Hotel, a five course prix fixe meal.

Thomas Keller of the French Laundry got his start at this restaurant, and his grandson was the chef that evening. It was delicious!

Sunday we were driving back to Fort Bragg, so no more wine tasting. We had breakfast at the Mosswood Market in Boonville, sharing a breakfast wrap and coffee.

Mosswood Market

Mosswood Market

On our way home we stopped at two of our favorites to purchase some wine.

Pennyroyal raises goats and sheep, selling cheese in addition to wine. We were greeted by one of the retired mama goats looking for a handout.

Their sister property is Navarro, just down to road a bit.

It was a delightful weekend, only an hour and a half away from our house in Fort Bragg.

New Zealand Adventure #3 – Bathroom Funnies
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New Zealand Adventure #3 – Bathroom Funnies

Bathrooms in New Zealand have a sense of humor.

Public bathrooms were almost uniformly clean, plentiful, and well-maintained. They were also sometimes surprisingly humorous.

There were the public bathrooms that gave you 10 minutes, then they would unlock the door…ready or not. Then there were the ones that wouldn’t unlock and open the door unless you washed your hands.

 

There were murals…

 

 

paintings on the wall…

 

 

and sneaky peeking observers.

It was an adventure.

New Zealand Adventure #2 – Breakfast
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New Zealand Adventure #2 – Breakfast

The food was very good in New Zealand, but what I remember the most are the breakfasts. Maybe it’s because I rarely have time for a sit-down breakfast at home. My habit is to grab a cup of tea and toast with almond butter, or something similarly easy. But breakfast at cafes around New Zealand was a treat and a necessity before a long morning of hiking.

The cappuccinos were works of art.

Not so much the decaf…

 

Perfectly poached eggs were often on the menu.

 

Do you see how delightfully orange the yolks were?

Bright orange yolks are not something I have seen since we kept backyard chickens several years ago. The orange color comes from carotenoid pigments in the hen’s diet. If they are fed orange things (cantaloupe, winter squash, carrots for example) and dark leafy greens, the yolks will be more orange. If they are fed corn, they will be medium yellow. And if they are fed more wheat and barley, the yolks will be a lighter color. The color makes no difference in the nutritional value. One interesting thing I found is that different countries prefer different colors. New Zealanders, Australians, and Southern Europeans prefer their egg yolks to be more orange, while Northern Europeans prefer them to be more yellow. Germany is divided in the middle.

By law, no artificial coloring is allowed in chicken feed, but some farmers will add marigold petals to give yolks an orangey color boost.

Smoked salmon was also a common item and was delicious.

Plus the occasional waffle or French toast, sometimes with more salmon.

 

One morning I had something called Turkish eggs. It turned out to be poached eggs with harissa, yogurt, zatar, and Dukkah. It was unexpectedly different and flavorful.

 

My fellow travelers from the U.S. were introduced to vegemite. I think you must have grown up on it, they were not fans. Having an English Mum meant we smuggled Bovril back from the U.K. every time we visited.

 

It has inspired me to be more creative at breakfast, at least on the weekends.

 

 

New Zealand Adventure #1 – Mount Cook, March 2023
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New Zealand Adventure #1 – Mount Cook, March 2023

A question I’ve been asked since we returned is ‘What did I enjoy the most about New Zealand?’. Maybe a better question would be ‘What was the most amazing thing about the trip?’ I’d have to answer that it was a small country’s incredible variety of terrain and flora. There were mountains, rainforests, coastal bluffs, lakes, and fjords.

Here is a sample of the variety. I am going to break this into several posts. There is simply too much to tell you in one.

The second day of our tour with New Zealand Trails took us to Mount Cook. The scheduled hike was a steep trail up the mountain. Unfortunately, it was closed by the park because of dangerous conditions. The first rainfall of the season had fallen overnight bringing snow to the higher elevations. The trail would have been icy, slippery, and muddy.

Mount Cook

Mount Cook

Our guides did a quick reset and it was decided to hike on the Hooker Trail. It’s part of the benefit of going with experienced guides who can turn on a dime when a change is needed to the itinerary.

Our group ready to hike on the Hooker Valley Trail

Our hiking tour group ready to hike on the Hooker Valley Trail

You can see we are all decked out and prepared for cold and wet conditions. Our dog trainers say that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear. They never cancel a class. We were ready for the challenge.

Steve and I, prepared for the weather

Steve and I were prepared for the weather. Bring it on!

The overnight rain had not only coated the mountains with snow, it had also created multiple waterfalls coming down into the river.

Roaring River

Roaring River

I wish I could include the roar in this post!

We crossed several hanging bridges on our hike. I was careful not to cross at the same time as one of our group who liked to jump up and down while we were on the bridge.

The payoff was at the end where we saw icebergs that had broken off from the glacier into the lake at the end of the trail. You can see the waterfalls coming off the mountains.

 

The next day dawned bright and clear with blue skies. We could finally see the top of Mount Cook in the distance.

Mount Cook

Mount Cook

Stay tuned for more adventure.

 

January – Planes, Trains, Automobiles…and much more
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January – Planes, Trains, Automobiles…and much more

After three years of isolation, we are finally traveling again. But, I am definitely out of practice. Packing is a laborious event, when before it was automatic. Thoughts of airport check-ins, security lines, passport control, and crowded terminals fill me with dread.

In the last 4 months, I have been to Dallas, Texas for a funeral and reunion with cousins in November. And in early December I spent a week in Hawaii with a friend to celebrate her retirement.

Together with my husband and another couple, we explored and hiked the redwood parks just north of here in late October.

The redwood burls look like creatures from “Lord of the Rings”, otherworldly.

And finally, the two of us took a trip to the west coast of Vancouver Island in B.C., Canada to visit the ‘storm hotels’.

All of the above is why you have not heard from me lately.

Following are some details of our trip to Canada. It’s a tale of trains, planes, and automobiles; plus the ferry and a bus. They say life is about the journey, this vacation was certainly to a large extent about the adventure of travel.

Throughout the last few years of drought in California we (my husband and myself) have watched the storms hit the west coast of Vancouver Island in Canada with envy. The low-pressure systems would sit just off their coast bringing a generous amount of rain. At the same time, a high-pressure system just off our northern California coast kept the rain away from us. The town of Tofino (at the end of the road in western Vancouver Island) has an average of 128 inches of rain annually! It’s a popular place for nature lovers and is crowded in the summer with surfers, kayakers, beachgoers, campers, fishers, and whale watchers. In the winter the visitors come for storm watching.

We planned this trip six months ago. We couldn’t have known that, ironically, the storms would hit our little coastal town with 30-foot waves and a deluge of rain while it was mostly rain-free in Canada. Sure, the sky was grey while we visited but very little precipitation fell to spoil our beach walks and hikes. At the same time, Fort Bragg had flooding and power outages.

Below is a picture of the sky as we drove into Oakland to catch our train.

Leaving the Bay Area the clouds looked like a second city floating above the buildings of San Francisco below

 

Amtrack Coastal Starlight

Both my husband and I love trains, so we started our little holiday with a 23-hour train ride from Oakland to Seattle on the Amtrak Coastal Starlight. The train originates in Los Angeles, traveling up the coast before it reaches its final destination in Seattle. We had a private room with a small bathroom, the seats converted into 2 generous bunks for sleeping. By day we had a comfortable chair, couch, and large picture window for watching the world flow by.

 

The beginning of the trip was in darkness, we boarded the train at 9:30 pm and the room was set up for sleep. Leaving Oakland the train traveled through the delta. Regarding the water below with weariness, the tracks seemed to be barely above the water. We heard that this same train, scheduled to leave the following day, had been canceled due to anticipated flooding.

The sound of the clicking and clacking of wheels and the gentle rocking of the train lulled us to sleep that night. We woke in the morning to a snowy landscape in Southern Oregon.

While we breakfasted on cheese omelets, our room was converted back into a sitting room. We arrived in Seattle on schedule that evening. Since our next train (to Vancouver B.C.) left early the next morning we booked a hotel near the train station. I was impressed by the Embassy Suites hotel, only a block away, where we visited the bar in the restaurant for a snack of fried artichoke hearts and a glass of wine before retiring for the night.

Early the next morning we boarded another train to Vancouver in B.C. Canada. It was an easy crossing of the border, two passport checks were the only red tape. From Vancouver, we took a taxi to the ferry terminal for the trip to Victoria on Vancouver Island.

We spent one very pleasant afternoon and evening in Victoria at the Victoria Regent Waterfront Hotel, which is centrally located in downtown Victoria.

City view from our hotel room in Victoria

On our ‘to-do’ list was a visit to the Irish Times pub where we had spent a pleasant blustery evening several years ago when we last visited Victoria.

Irish Times Pub in Victoria

Shepherd’s pie and a pint were a must.

Shepherd’s Pie at Irish Times

The next morning we picked up our rental car for the 4-hour drive to Tofino. So far we hadn’t seen any rain although our daughter, who was house and dog sitting back home, reported a power outage due to strong winds associated with the storms hitting the coast of California.

In Tofino, we stayed at the Pacific Sands Hotel where we had a small studio apartment overlooking the beach.

Beach off the Pacific Sands Hotel in Tofino

We did find a few places to watch the waves crashing on the shore. The sky was grey and gloomy but it didn’t stop us from long beach walks.

Tofino Beach

We had one memorable hike through the rainforest on an elevated walkway. About a mile in length, the wooden walkway took us up high on a ridge and then down into a ravine with a stream where salmon spawned. The richness of the moss, ferns, and trees in the forest felt ancient and primordial.

Although Tofino is a small town of just over 2,000 permanent residents, several accomplished chefs have settled there and opened restaurants. A few of them were closed because it was just after the busy holidays but we had no difficulties finding wonderful places to eat.

Although the restaurant Roar is in a hotel that looks to be something straight out of the ’60s, the food was excellent. We sat near the kitchen where we could watch them cooking over an actual roaring fire. It reminded me of the TV show Bear, which I recommend.

Whole baked fish at Roar
Roar Chef (reminded us of the program Bear)
View from the Savory Island Pie Company
Egg and bacon breakfast sandwich at the Savory Island Pie Company

We had breakfast one morning at the Savory Island Pie Company. The menu did not limit itself to pies and we had excellent croissants and scones to take away for another morning.

After four amazingly cozy days in Tofino, we drove back to Victoria for 3 more days at the Victoria Regent. This time we had a small apartment with a full kitchen. We were surprised to learn that the hotel had originally been condos and there were some full-time residents. Our room overlooked the harbor, and we could watch seaplanes land and take off from the balcony.

Victoria Harbor

Then it was time to take the ferry back to Vancouver, a bus (no I didn’t forget it) to the airport, and a plane back to Oakland.

After hearing horror stories of travel experiences over the holidays, we felt lucky that everything went smoothly. We arrived home to mostly clear skies as the storms had moved north to Vancouver Island.