Hey, what do you know, the kids are gone on a week-long summer camp! This meant that Barbara and I were free to do whatever we wanted. We decided to go on a road trip.
Over the weekend, I booked a B&B, planned the route and gassed up the yellow car. I have not yet taken the yellow car out of the Bay Area (only my parents have!), so this would be exciting and new for me.
We dropped the kids off at church at noon, arranged dog sitting, then headed north. Eventually, we got on highway one (the California coastal highway) and kept on cruising north. The Porsche is absolutely amazing in the corners so anytime we were not stuck behind some slower person, we zipped around a bit. After three hours, we had reached our first destination: Fort Ross.
Fort Ross is a Russian outpost – yes, the Russians “owned” California for a brief period of time – and we wanted to see it. Unfortunately, it was closed due to severe cutbacks in park and recreation funding. Well, I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to see this, and Fort Ross is near absolutely nothing, so we, and a whole bunch of other folks, walked through the “sort of” closed gate (we got the feeling that the gate was left open on purpose. There was simply a sign that said: “keep gate closed.”), past the entrance building (complete with a very large dirt path – looks like a lot of people went around this building) and down to the fort. The exterior was wonderful, and really, there didn’t appear to be too much inside the fort from what we could see, so I didn’t feel like I really missed out.
Fort Ross
Because the park was closed, Barb and I did have to find some alternative bathrooms – it had been three hours after all. She found some bushes and I found a tree.
Our drive to Sonoma included 50 miles of highway one that we had just been through. Google Earth had showed us a more direct route, but the Porsche navigation system said that we’d save time by retracing our steps. I didn’t mind the longer but quicker route because highway one is really pretty, and curvy. Alas, we got behind a truck almost immediately after leaving Fort Ross. At first, I thought this would be a problem, but the truck driver turned out to be really, really good at driving. He obviously also knew this road very well. Basically, he drove his truck like I drive my Porsche; and we both clipped along very nicely. Eventually, we parted ways and I met up with a couple of speed demons (a Mustang and a motorcycle) and we hit the long straightaway to Petaluma at blinding speeds, only slowing down when the roads became rough near the city’s perimeter. The ride to Sonoma after that was both quick and scenic.
The B&B I had chosen was highly recommended, but I was really not all that impressed. It was basically an old house that had only been moderately kept up. We were also given the bedroom that Yelp had advised us to avoid due to excessive traffic noise. Barb and I opted to spend as much time out of the B&B as possible this evening, because there was absolutely nothing to do in the house. The only amenity we had in our room was a TV that got four channels.
We opted to take a walk to dinner; since we had been driving all day (that and I had scored the one parking spot under a tree in the shade at the B&B). The walk to the restaurant was 1.2 miles, so not so bad. When we got to the restaurant, it was closed. Much like in Europe, the restaurant folks work the weekend because that’s when the people arrive in droves, so they close Monday or Tuesday. Today was Monday. Grabbing our smart phones, we looked up our alternative restaurant (I had chosen the top six rated restaurants on Yelp, and had chosen two as possibilities for this evening). The website showed that it was also closed. The restaurant I had chosen for tomorrow’s lunch was open, so we went there for dinner. What a great choice! The restaurant, “The girl and the fig,” was a moderately-priced French restaurant with great reviews. The inside lacked air-conditioning and (just like Yelp had mentioned) had a fly issue, but I had not tasted food this good since my last trip to Europe. The meal was simply awesome (and in typical French fashion, also very long – two plus hours). No worries, we weren’t in any hurry.
The cheese plate
The sun set as we were walking home. It was no much cooler, which is a good thing because the walk to the downtown area was very hot and uncomfortable. Once we got to the B&B, we watched the Olympics on one of the four channels and settled into our extremely soft King-sized bed.