Middle class, middle-aged heaven

Next stop: Napa, the wine region. Calistoga to be precise. We couldn’t get through to the RV site to make a reservation, so just turned up hoping for the best. Unfortunately our visit coincided with a big dirt-bike race, and those dirt-bikers love their RVs; no room at the inn. Luckily, the guy who broke the news helpfully told us that if we could “dry camp” (survive without water, sewer hookups) for the night, we could borrow a corner of the field. And if we left earlyish in the morning, we might not even have to pay. Result!

It turned out to be a nice spot, next to a garden with loads of sunflowers, and the next morning we took off early for breakfast in Calistoga without paying a cent. We stopped off at a small farmers market to spend our money on cucumbers and strawberries instead.

I wasn’t really into the whole Napa thing, it really seemed like a middle class, middle aged wine theme-park. We didn’t actually venture into any of the many wineries, apart from Hall that Jen wanted to visit to check on the progress of their Frank Gehry installation. Turned out it was cancelled, so rather than spend $40 on a bottle of wine to be polite, we just went down the street to fancy pants supermarket Dean & Deluca (which Jen had spotted on the way in) and then set off for Point Reyes.

Edited: August 5th, 2010