Napa and Sonoma

On our way back to the Pacific Northwest, we stopped by California Wine Country.

 Along much of the way, and especially in the Napa and Sonoma area, we were greeted by beautiful California Poppies.

 There were enough golf courses in the Napa/Sonoma area to satisfy even the most avid duffer.  The vineyard forms the rough?

 This, of course was the main attraction.  We got there a little before the vines leafed out, but the setting was still gorgeous.  This was the famous Stag's Leap district.

 One of the must go places is Gott's Roadside Burgers.  This is probably the only roadside burger place we've ever seen that had a wine list, and a pretty good one at that.  The burgers and shakes were excellent, but at a cost of $40 for two burgers and two shakes, a tad expensive.

 Across the road, these professional offices were faced by spectacular wisterias.

 We saw several of these water towers like this one to the right of the yellow house throughout the valley.

We loved the whimsey of this truck/sculpture outside the Calistoga Water bottling plant.

 Our favorite town in the area was Sonoma.  We spent quite a while wandering through her streets and looking at shops.

One of of the less publicized features of the area is the excellent cheeses that are available here.  This is the Cowgirl Creamery, one of our favorites.  Their Mt. Tam goat cheese is excellent.

These, I suppose, are some of the contented California cows, of TV commercial fame, from which they get the milk to make their outstanding cheeses.

Not too far from our campground in Vacaville (which, of course translates to cow town, a well deserved name) was the Jelly Belly factory.  Of course, we had to stop by and pick up some treats for grandkids.  The white spots in the foreground are the remains of sleet that had blanketed the area earlier.

This was a fun little stop, full of school bus loads of kids, there on field trips.  Penny speculated on what state standard would be met by this outing.