Llywindatravels 2025

A Taste of Redwood Valley, Solstice, and Father’s Day, all in one.

June 21, 2015 was all of the above. We didn’t know much about “A Taste of Redwood Valley” but we took a chance and drove there, and that turned out to be a great idea. Today was a community-wide tasting that included seven vineyards and one craft distillery.

Participants included Barra of Mendocino (Girasole Vineyards), Brown Family Wines, Frey Vineyards, Giuseppe Wines (Norse Vineyards), Graziano Faimily of Wines, Silversmith Vineyards, Testa Vineyards and Germain-Robin/ACWD Craft Distillers.

These wineries are not open every weekend for tasting, though some are available for tastings by appointment. The Taste of Redwood Valley makes it possible to visit as many of these wineries as you wish–or that you have the stamina to visit. Tickets were $35 per person and included a wine glass, all tastings, and complimentary food at each stop. Food included pasta salads, hot pasta, rice salad, tossed green salad, bread. We started at Barra, where a very welcoming hostess got us started, and a long list of wines were available for tasting in a large circular tasting room. As usual, I tasted whites while Jonathan tasted reds. We bought Sauvignon Blanc and a Pinot Noir.

http://www.barraofmendocino.com/

Our next stop was Testa’s outdoor tasting room, up a driveway and beside their guest house. Everyone was just as friendly here as at Barra, and we ended up buying three bottles.

https://testaranch.com

From there we went to Brown Family Wines, where the owner told us about his move from Manchester, England to Redwood City as he searched for a different lifestyle. Between shopping for property, moving his family including three daughters and navigating the permitting process for improvements to the property, it is quite a story. We ended up with a case of wine from the Brown family.http://www.californiawineryadvisor.com/wineries/view/Brown_Family_Wines

Rather than pushing to hit all of the vineyards (!), our final stop for the day was at Germain-Robin, to taste distilled spirits. There were flavored brandies (orange, vanilla, cherry–I liked the orange best). There were liqueurs, including one flavored with rose petals. “They made this for our wedding,” said the woman next to me. She and her husband explained that for their rose-themed wedding they wanted something special and they were able to have an early and somewhat experimental batch of the rose liqueur. (“We were R&D!” they said.) It did taste like rose petals, stronger than rose water, and definitely an acquired taste, but it clearly has its fans. There was gin scented with ginger, with lime, or London Dry gin. There were California whiskies (who knew?), and more products than I could taste, even spitting most of it out.

home

We headed back to our house in Little River around 3:30 pm, got to Ft. Bragg in under an hour, and home after a stop at the store. It was a wonderful day. This was our second wine tasting day. Our first was last Sunday when we visited the Alexander Valley. That area will take many more visits, however. Redwood City holds a fall event, so you don’t need to wait until next year to visit.

Arch at entrance to Willets, CA, "Gateway to the Redwoods" — Arch at entrance to Willets, CA, “Gateway to the Redwoods” on the way from Redwood Valley to Mendocino.

Don’t even think about catching or eating Abalone.

We got up in time to be on the coast at low tide just after 8 am. There are only a few days this summer when unusually low tide coincides with the 8 am start time for abalone fishing. In fact, the start time was moved to 8 am from an earlier hour to decrease the number of days, such as these, when it is possible to collect abalone without diving.

Abalone fishing.

Rainbow over abalone fishing.

That’s probably no longer possible. The abalone population has decreased so rapidly in recent years that the annual catch per person is now three abalone per day and 18 abalone per year per individual. It turns out THAT IS STILL TOO MANY. Today is a Saturday and an usually low tide just after 8 am, and that may have increased the number of people fishing, but you do the math: in a stretch of coast less than a mile long there were 15 people, in groups of 2-5 persons, fishing for abalone {that we saw). There could have been more. Each of the people we spoke to had their full quota of 3 abalone. That means 45 adult abalone are collected per mile, per day, as often as seven days a week. How long will there we abalone to harvest? Not very long by my calculation. The state of California has been monitoring the population of abalone and decreasing catch limits each year. What happens when a moratorium has to be put in place? Are there enough people to monitor this and prevent poaching? I doubt it. What should be done?

One of the many places where people hunt abalone.

California State Parks are the place to go.

California is full of state parks, something I did not know. Between Mendocino and Ft. Bragg are a string of parks that provide access to the coast. Some charge $8.00 to park. If you park elsewhere and walk in there’s no charge, but sometimes there is no alternative. We’ve started looking for cars parked by the side of the road in random locations. This usually means there is a trail to the shore, through a park. We’re also considering purchasing a season pass for the state park system. Over 3 months, it would be worth it. I have to check tomorrow, but I believe it costs the same as a fishing license.

We’ve spent two days exploring and fishing at one end of the park that surrounds our neighborhood. It doesn’t seem to have a name, and we could go back over and over, but there are so many parks……so little time. Birds, fish, wild flowers, beachcombing–I’m so busy!

A chiton from the beach. Beautiful, but they're a bit tough, like clam strips. — A chiton from the beach. Beautiful, but they’re a bit tough, like clam strips.

Massive driftwood. Can people take home driftwood from the beach if they can lift it?

Fishing.

The Bahamas Effect and second homes

We are in a gorgeous gated neighborhood, where each house has a view of the ocean, the spectacular Mendocino coast. Tonight as we walked down the street we realized that about 75% of the homes are unoccupied. Yes, it’s Sunday night and people may have gone back to the Bay Area for work, but we didn’t notice an influx of vehicles over the weekend. Where is everyone?

I call this the Bahamas Effect after our boating trip around the Sea of Abaco when all the lovely beach homes appeared to be empty–their owners were somewhere else working to pay for their lovely but unoccupied houses. People who actually live in the area full time tend to be packed together in tiny houses in tiny communities. It’s probably true to some extent for the Mendocino area, too. All those fabulous views have a high cost.

Mendocino at last! June 9, 2015

It wasn’t exactly the drive from Chicago to Mendocino that made us so happy to arrive. After all, we had wonderful stops along the way and saw all kinds of things. It was the unsettled nature of travel. Both of us enjoy new places, but we do not enjoy being on the road indefinitely. I think we would agree that 10 days of constant travel is about as much as we like. Yes, we were on the road for six weeks starting in January, and the trip we’ve just completed was under 2 weeks. We are happy to NOT be on the road for a while, and to enjoy being in a new place, but settled, for a while.

And what a place!

We bought a Dungeness crab on the road to Mendocino. Jonathan sat on the deck and cracked it.

We had crab salad. Mmmm.

Today’s adventure was visiting beaches south of our house.

The sand is speckled with abalone fragments.

Rural California

Reading the newspaper you wouldn’t think there were any small farmers or ranchers left in California–it’s all sprawling cities or thousand-acre farms. Driving from Petaluma to Mendocino, we passed through, and were surprised by, rural California alive and well. Small farms and ranches extended from Petaluma to the coast.

California means wine.

We had a free day before moving into our house in Mendocino, so we did what all visitors do in California–taste wine! We drove to Sonoma, visiting the Robledo Winery on the way there, and then we visited the Walt tasting room off the Sonoma plaza. What lovely wine, and enjoyable conversation. It was a great way to spend a very hot afternoon.

Idaho–Reno–California!

We left Twin Falls, Idaho, crossed that beautiful country and stayed overnight at the Nugget Casino in Reno, NV (June 6). The Casino was not particularly inviting, especially considering I don’t ordinarily gamble. Too much smoke.

We had a nice dinner at the oyster bar, however, and the room was a bargain compared to anything else in the area. In the morning we headed out, stopping to look out over the landscape. It was shocking to see that Washoe Lake is empty. It still appears blue, a regular lake, on the map, yet it is a black blot, not even marshy. Anyone who thinks the decrease in water in California isn’t serious should drive out and have a look.

We continued on to Lake Tahoe to see some of the shore that once belonged to the Haas family. It is too bad that the land was sold long ago–the shore of the lake is very beautiful. The area is popular in the summer and reminds me a lot of Lake George when we visited in the summer. Lots of motels, watersports, and traffic.

We stopped at the museum in Tahoe City to see the basket collection. There were some wonderful items. Some of the baskets were decorated with tiny black feathers, quail topknots. There used to be a lot…..of quail, considering the number of these tiny feathers around all those baskets. We ate our picnic lunch outside the museum.

By the end of the day we made it as far as Petaluma.

Where to see wildlife in the Rockies

By the end of our visit to the cabin in Bailey, CO we had seen a remarkable list of birds and animals. We’d been on a hike in the nearby Pike National Forest, visited a quarry to hunt for amazonite crystals and eaten everything from elk to quail. What we discovered is that the best wildlife viewing may be in your own backyard. As our friend Mark pointed out, when you walk the trails in the National Forest, the animals and birds are often hiding. You may here a few twittering birds in the distance but you don’t ordinarily see birds and animals.

Sitting on the deck of their cabin, we saw an AMAZING range of birds and animals. The birds are all habituated to the people on the deck by the bird feeders.

The broad-tailed hummingbirds visit their feeder, while chickadees, nuthatches, black-headed grosbeak, and red-wing blackbird visit for the seeds. Stellar’s jay and nutcrackers come by for the peanuts wedged in the branches and perched on top of the fence posts. Bluebirds were building a nest in a dead tree down the road. We watched a red-tailed hawk harried by a raven and a red-winged blackbird.

Animals are protected by the prohibition against hunting near houses and roads. As a result, they roam more freely among the houses than you would imagine. In four days we fed the ground squirrels, squirrels and chipmunks, saw mule deer wading across the shallows of the lake and browsing their way across the hill below us, male and female red fox and their four kits (one of the adults is a black morph with a fluffy white-tipped tail. On the drive from the cabin to dinner at The Fort, in Morrison, CO, we watched a coyote raid a red-winged blackbird’s nest, pounce, and eat a baby bird. By the time we left the cabin we were only waiting on the extremes: elk, moose, mountain sheep, and bear. Today, after we left, this is what Jonathan got on his cell phone:

3 hrs after you left!!!

Young moose wading in the lake. Mark and Marcy’s cabin in the background…….

Who knows how much longer it would be before we saw the others!

The moral of the story is that sitting on the deck looking at the gorgeous surroundings may be a more effective way to see wildlife than hiking through the National Forest.