California - Day 21 - CA wine country

Cloverdale/Healdsburg KOA, Cloverdale

Monday, 21 March 2022

The Petaluma KOA looked in person entirely different than the impression I'd gotten from its site map posted online.  The map made me think it was entirely paved with hundreds of campsites elbow-to-elbow.  In person, it was much more attractive with loads of trees and grass.  I suppose on a busy night the sites might seem close together, but Sundays are often lighter than other nights and what I saw looked fairly comfortable.  There's a large stand of mixed trees with lots of redwoods right in the middle of the campground, so lots of the cabins and RV sites were in attractive locations.  And one area that was billed as a prime locale (and charged for accordingly) was a wire fence away from a herd of cows.  I wouldn't have thought cow odors would be a high-class milieu, but the cows are certainly picturesque.

Although we didn't get all that much rain down near Santa Cruz, there must have been a lot up here because 24-36 hours later the ground was still completely saturated, with lots of mud.

Morgan told me yesterday that California has microclimates, and the one Los Gatos sits in has milder weather than in other areas not far away.  Maybe Petaluma is in a very wet microclimate.

today's route

I stopped in town at a gas station and at the Target, neither of which I'd thought about when I planned my route, and which meant none of my mileage references were accurate.  Still, I thought I could figure it out, because this didn't look like a densely-populated area of town.

But I got lost and learned that this is indeed more densely populated than I'd thought.  I wandered around in residential areas trying desperately to keep in mind either where I'd come from or where I wanted to go.  None of that helped and I finally found a parking lot I could stop in to turn on my laptop and hotspot and reorient myself.  Actually, I had to do that twice but finally found my way out of town.

Which was out of any town for many miles.  Mostly I passed vineyards, a few horses and cows and houses, but mostly vineyards.  Almost all of today's drive was through the Sonoma and Napa counties, ending in Mendocino.  Individual winery areas in these counties are called Russian River Valley, in the south; Alexander Valley, in the northeast; Dry Creek Valley in the northwest.  I drove through pieces of all 3.  I assume those names ring a bell for you from the wine bottle labels we've all seen.  I didn't even write down the names of most of the familiar wineries I passed, but the ones I did include Silver Oak, Glen Ellen, Chateau St. Jean, and La Crema.  And many many more.

All day the road wound its narrow way up and down through the hills of these agricultural areas, through the towns of Sonoma, pop. 10,739; Boyes Hot Springs, pop. 6,215, (which I could identify only because I saw the name on the post office building); Kenwood, pop. 852.  This road was designated the Valley of the Moon Scenic Route, presumably because northern Sonoma county is sometimes called Valley of the Moon - a name that comes from the language of the indigenous people in this area.

Just north of Boyes Hot Springs I came to the turn for the Jack London State Historic Park.  I connect Jack London with the Far North and hadn't realized he once owned a ranch here.  It's that ranch that's been protected by the State of CA.  They've got an interesting website  https://jacklondonpark that includes several quotes from Jack London.  As an example: "Get up; wake up; kick in; do something; deliver the goods; come across; arise or be forever damned."  (Enough to make you feel like you've been wasting your time.)

On the way into Santa Rosa, I passed a business called The Pony Express.  Their sign said, "Horses Change Kids; Kids Change The World."  Which I guess sums up their business.  Also in Santa Rosa, I passed the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.  I think I remember that he himself was an artist, but his lifelong focus and passion was for botany so I'm not sure why this arts center was named for him.

California has designated a petrified forest near the town of Calistoga as a state historical landmark.  They say it was created by a violent volcano eruption 3.4 million years ago and is now considered one of the world's best examples of a preserved ancient forest.  Calistoga itself, with 5,228 residents, is mostly famous these days for its vineyards.  In this area I saw fields of bluebonnets and a lot of Spanish moss in the trees.

Driving directions to tonight's campground included a lot of short hops on a series of roads, followed by a couple of longer stretches - all uphill.  When I was coming around a curve partway through the last stretch, I saw a sign saying, "Don't Despair - You're Almost There."  That was smart of the campground to put that up because by that time I was indeed wondering if I were on the right road.

This was a strange campground - mostly because KOAs tend to be more sophisticated than - say - national park campgrounds.  But this one was as rural as I've seen and built entirely on multiple hills.  As it happened, I'd asked for one of the best campsites (for my needs), though I hadn't realized it at the time.  We were in a location where I had choices for which way to walk the dogs, and it was fairly level.  The office was closed when I got there - in fact, I didn't talk to a staff person the whole time we were there - so it's a good thing I didn't any help.  Their wifi system wasn't useful for me and my hotspot decided this location was too rural to get service, but I was only staying one night so we were okay.