Bob & Cindy's 2015 Travel Web Site
Location Links
Salinas Valley - Pinnacles National Park & Northern Sonoma Valley
From San Simeon, we went back through Paso Robles and then up the 101 to a little town in the middle of the Salinas Valley (Greenfield), also known as the salad bowl of America since most produce we consume (such as lettuce, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, celerey, spinich, asian weird vegetables, peppers, artichokes, potatoes, and strawberries) come from this area. Oh yeah, a lot of grapes also. The first thing that impresses is the number of Latino workers. TV stations, radio, billboards, news, resturants, etc are mostly in Spanish. Even more so than what we see in the San Antonio and Austin areas. Kind of neat actually. Then there is the obvious irrigation for all these crops that are being grown, this in an area where they have a drought going on that is worse than anything we have in Texas.
Between Paso Robles and Greenfield, we drove many miles through this kind of farmland. Huge fields of vineyards, obviously part of some very large corporate business. No signage as to what company.
This is in the Santa Lucia Highlands area of the Salinas/Monterey Valley area. Very warm days and cool nights plus marine layer fog in the mornings helps this area with mainly Zinfandel, and Cab varietals. Some pinot noir also.
We are finding that if we do more than 4 wineries in a day, we can't keep track of what we like and don't like. It all starts to run together. Maybe it's just the age (our age, not the wine).
Some nice tasting rooms but this area is not a destination kind of place. Not many accomodations available and nothing for kids to do. Just over the mountain on the west is Carmel and Monterey but it's just a little too far.
But we are determined to explore new places. Most of these wines we have never heard of, We did find a couple of good ones.
While we were in Greenfield, we spent one day over at Pinnacles National Park. It's an interesting place where the geology has been moved about 200 miles to the north along the San Andreas Fault from where it was formed in Southern California.
Caves have been formed along the canyons simply because of huge slabs of rock collapsing down into the canyon but creating passages through the canyon.
Looking up, one hopes another earthquake does not decide to shift along the fault (which is right by the park). We would be pretty flat if that happened.
Some of the pinnacles.
Along the trail coming back. It felt good to do a day hike, we haven't had many opportunities to do that.
Every day in Greenfield, about 2 o'clock, the wind comes up and it blows 25-30 mph from the ocean side toward the inland area until 7 or 8 PM. These small trees were in the RV park where we camped and it's pretty obvious the wind blows a lot!
From Greenfield, we drove around the San Francisco/Oakland area to get up to a small town north of Sonoma Valley named Cloverdale. Here we are in the area of Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley, Russian River Valley, and Anderson Valley.
One of our favorite wines, Rafanelli. This is the daughter of the guy who owns and runs the winery and her new white lab puppy. She is also the new head winemaker! We had a good time catching up and listening to her Dad discuss some of the issues they face with the changing marketplace. They are small and intend to stay that way.
The grounds at Rafanelli, one of our favorite places and so representative of many spots in the Dry Creek Valley.
Another relatively new AVA is Anderson Valley which is on the road over to Mendocino. It's cooler and wetter over there and they are becoming known for their Pinot Noir's. Very pricy though.
We had lunch at this winery on a perfect 75 degree day. We were thinking about taking the coach over to Mendocino, but the roads are so windy and steep, we thought we'd just do it on a day trip.
So tomorrow, we are going to say goodbye to the wine country and hello to the Northern California Coast. We will spend a couple of days around Mendocino before heading up the 101 to Redwood country. There is an area called the Lost Coast where we hear there is some good day hiking. Stay tuned.
