Afternoon on the Russian River, and some wine tasting

We drive to Santa Rosa once a month to see doctors, and rather than spend 8 hours in the car for a one hour appointment, we stay overnight, have dinner at a nice restaurant, and do a bit of exploring and wine tasting. It keeps us both much happier about the scarcity of medical specialists in the Eureka area.

We stay at the Best Western Dry Creek Inn in Healdsburg. Formerly a tiny farming settlement, Healdsburg is now a real wine town, full of restaurants and boutiques. It can get hot in the summer, and the motel has a pool.

Del Rio Woods Regional Park

On this trip, we looked for a place to explore after my appointment, and found Del Rio Woods Regional Park just a few miles away. The park surrounds a stretch of the Russian River, and the gravelly banks have become a local beach. You can tell that the area was underwater earlier in the year, but now that it’s June the water has receded to its normal banks. There are warnings online about taking care when swimming because of the speed of the current. In the Del Rio Woods area, though, the river is so shallow that all you’d need to do is put your feet down and stand up to get out of the current. Kids might enjoy a life vest for some floating fun, walking upstream and then zipping to the opposite end of the beach.

We walked along the shore, not tempted by the water on this particular day when the wind was blowing. There are some substantial beach shelters set up by those who own houses nearby.

We saw a few birds along the river, too, though we heard many more than we saw. It was a lovely afternoon along the water.

We had dinner at Baci, and Italian restaurant in Healdsburg, sharing a generous salad, orechiette with broccolini, and saltimbocca. It was all delicious. Making a reservation was a good idea on a Thursday evening in the summer.

The next morning, we decided to stop and taste some wine on the way home. There are a lot of vineyards in this area, and many of them offer tastings, especially at this time of year when tourists begin to venture north. We stopped at the Graziano Winery Tasting Room in Hopland, CA, to chat with John, who is usually there and is always full of good humor. We picked up the wine we were due from our wine club membership, and added a few others (They have a new white, Greco di Tufo.). Then we went on to try a new place a bit further north, Nelson Family Vineyards, on the outskirts of Ukiah. We tasted and bought a bottle of viognier, petite sirah, and the sparkling rose. We won’t join the wine club, as we have joined two so far, and that’s enough. We spat most of our wine in the cups and buckets used for the purpose, which makes it possible to drive home afterward.

We arrived home in time for a late lunch around 3 pm, having made the most of my visit to the doctor.

Hotel: Best Western Inn Dry Creek, Healdsburg, CA

Dinner: Baci, Healdsburg, CA (we made a reservation)

Breakfast: Quail & Condor, Healdsburg, CA (best croissants this side of Paris)