A few weeks ago, Karen and I set off for a Fall vacation. This was the plan: fly in to San Francisco for 1 night, go to Napa for 2 nights, drive up the coast of CA (1 night), spend 1 night in to Portland, OR before heading to Vancouver, BC (2 nights) and finally shooting back down to Seattle for a night before heading home.
Before we left I feared it would be too much driving but in the end it was absolutely manageable, some might even call it “super fun.”
Here are some photos from along the way:
This was our hotel in San Francisco. Normally I would show you pictures of our friends Maggie and Manlio that we caught up with but sadly I don’t have any.
Has anyone ever had one of these? Are they as insane as they look?
You can tell Hertz’s Nerverlost GPS is going to be a doozy by just looking at the unique (and initially tough to use) button layout and subsequent relationship of those buttons to the items on the screen (the alphabet above is a great example of that). It certainly isn’t ideal and though I really wanted to hate it, after a day or so I was zipping around the interface with ease.
Also, for better or worse, I think we’ve officially reached the point where GPS is no longer optional. And I’m not buying the “but then you’ll never know the wonders of getting lost (, man)”. You can keep your paper maps and your devil sticks, hippy, I’ll take a GPS any day – no matter how crappy the interface is.
Here’s a quick snap of us at the Frog’s Leap vineyard – an organic (et tu, hippy) vineyard that seemed super awesome but it turned out we need to make a reservation so we were limited to prowling the grounds without a guide.
That night we headed to Farm at the Carneros Inn, an awesome place Karen found that had really delicious food to go with their really classy outdoor bocce courts seen here:
Our hotel employed a sensor-based minibar that practically threatened to charge us for merely looking at something for more than 40 seconds. (we learned later in the trip that this technology is becoming pretty widespread.)
The next morning we went to the Domaine Carneros Estate for a wine tour (lots of wine and champagne for 10 am!). Neither Karen nor I had ever been on one of these so there was a lot to learn.
Karen’s so excited.
The vineyards at Domaine Carneros.
I thought these giant machines looked awesome.
Each of the machines/robots in the bottling process was labeled with their name/role. I imagine they could make a pretty neat Pixar short about this whole process.
That grape looks awfully happy considering it’s about to get squashed!
So many barrels.
The caves at Del Dotto Estates (our second wine tasting of the day). The outside decor was super Married to the Mob, if you know what I mean. The wine caves (where the tasting happens) provide a great contrast to the soaring marble columns, etc. in the front.
Considering we were tasting wine form 10am on, I think we developed a great system to keep us (and everyone else on the road) safe. Our method: Karen drinks all the wines and I just taste them.
That approach brought us here to Taylor’s Automatic Refresher.
This may very well be the best burger I’ve ever had. Also, this is where Karen tried to spin one of their trays on one finger:
Later that afternoon we mosied over to Francis Ford Coppola’s Rubicon Estate.
Though we were told that the tasting would be $35 each our pourer decided to put it on the house – 4 more wines for nothing! Yay! After having the wine we spent some time exploring the impressive building and grounds.
It was in that building with a gravel floor that Karen decided she was going to make a gravel angel ™ and I was going to capture that singularly bizarre moment.
Happy times!
For everyone!
After two days eating and drinking in Napa (we also had a great meal at the famed Martini House) we hopped in the car and started driving up the coast, determined to make it as close to the Oregon border as we could in one day.
We packed a drive time snack of soppresata and cheese…
…and stopped at a few scenic stops along the way.
I was blown away by the sight of my first Redwoods.
Look at how big they are!
We loved them so much we needed to hug.
One more beach stop before we headed inland a bit as the coastal route (and its hairpin turns was taking forever)
Had dinner at an average seafood restaurant in Trinidad with an above average view and then ended up crashing in Crescent City at the Hampton Inn.
If only all the hotels were this good about service.
The next day took us up to Portland with a couple of stops along the way. One stop was at a place called It’s a Burl – an amazing place filled with Gaudi-esque elaborate wood carvings.
The whole place was so detailed.
Pretty sweet treehouses, no?
And doghouses to match!
Said dogs. The little one was super cute and named Fanny Mae.
Just a crazy wooden bicycle.
After spending about 45 minutes at this place we bought a little wooden mirror and got back on the road, making it to Portland by about 5pm. We check into our hotel, the Modera , and then took them up on their offer of a wine tasting beside their outdoor firepits.
After 4 glasses of wine we hopped in a cab over to Clark Lewis (thanks for the recommendation, Micah!) for a really delicious dinner. I mean, would Karen be this happy if it wasn’t that delicious? I don’t think so.
After dinner we thought it might be a good idea to find some karaoke so we ended up at a place called Chopsticks.
Though the sign clearly states that it is a asian food restaurant, we saw nothing of the sort. This place was awesome in the weird ways that might make Chuck Palahniuk talk about it. At first the tracks people were singing had us a little worried. Deep cut after deep cut got us thinking this might not be the Patience/Don’t Stop Believing kind of crowd.
It took a little while (and a couple of PBR tall boys and one fateful shot of tequila) but it all worked out. Karen belted out Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.
I later dropped a little Somewhere Only We Know (for the indie crowd) and Patience (for the fans).
The next day it was off to Vancouver (and all the rain it brings with it). Sadly it rained for both days we were there but we still were able to get out and check out the city. Lucky for us, our hotel happened to be right on the corner where the Japadog girls set up shop every day. For those that don’t know Japadog makes the absolute best (and most unique) street dogs you’ll ever have.
Don’t believe me? Just ask Ice Cube (he’s had 10 of them!). Or Jin from Lost (he prefers Veggie). Don’t forget Steven Seagal!
While we were walking around on Granville Island I saw this warning sticker that made me think that touching this box might make me break into a Thriller-like dance.
Here’s us not letting the rain get us down.
Even though it was pretty rainy, we managed to get some good shots:
Floating gas station!
Jellyfish
We ate piles of seafood at this place in Yaletown called Rodney’s Oyster House. The food was amazing and the service lots of fun.
We made a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park (could have been the nicest city park I’ve ever been to. I love Central Park and Prospect Park but this one gets huge points for being on the water. We saw dolphins, beluga whales, otters, sea lions and more. I forgot how much I loved aquariums as a kid.
After another day in Vancouver we headed to Seattle for one last night. Little did we know we’d spend almost 2 hours sitting in the car waiting to cross the border.
For our last night o the trip we went to a place called Kushibar for some delicious Takoyaki and Ramen…
…and then for some drinks at the McLeod Residence, a place I’ve been wanting to visit since our SXSW friend Buster told us about it.
We also got to see the mirror we had heard so much about. Here it is in action:
That marked the end of our trip and a great one it was. While this post was a long one, I didn’t even include all the photos we took. If you’re interested in seeing more you can check out all of my photos here and all of karen’s here.
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