PETALUMA, Calif. — Summer is a splendid time to take in the waters, wine and delights of Napa and Sonoma counties in Northern California.
Head across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, through the hills of Marin County, and then up Highway 101. The highway runs through California’s sensuous golden hills, past happily munching cows, isolated farms and ranches, fruit orchards, and small towns and villages.
Napa’s wineries and its towns of St. Helena, Yountville and Calistoga are well-known, but Sonoma County to the west, while less familiar, is equally rewarding. Its historic towns are worth a stop en route to Santa Rosa or to points west and north.
Sonoma takes its name from the Coast Miwok and Pomo Indian tribes. It’s a word that translates as “valley of the moon,” a title used even by Jack London for one of his novels. The town of Sonoma, built as a Mexican pueblo around a central square when California was still part of that country, is the site of the last and northernmost of the 21 California missions. The leafy plaza is surrounded by quaint shops, restaurants, hotels and the Mission San Francisco Solano.
The town’s Vella Cheese Factory produces many varieties of California’s Jack cheese; the Sonoma Barracks offers visitors a glimpse of local history; and the Sonoma Museum of Art has first-class exhibits of local, national and international artists, as well as a pleasant cafe. The Ravenswood and Sebastiano wineries are just two of those in town.
Petaluma, celebrated by Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy and the gang in the famous Peanuts comic strip, once called itself “the egg capital of the world,” and has preserved 19th-century buildings and Victorian houses that survived the 1906 earthquake. It boasts a chicken pharmacy, the world’s only drugstore devoted to the health of the likes of Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons and snow-white Leghorns — famous egg-layers all.
Chicken farming began in Petaluma in the 1860s and prospered until the 1960s. The chicken incubator was invented there. But mechanization is returning chicken prosperity to Petaluma, which celebrates Butter & Egg Days every April.
Della Fattoria, a bakery and cafe in a 19th-century building downtown, makes wonderful breads, and the cafe serves breakfast and lunch, including a killer Chinese chicken salad and a tuna sandwich on pizza dough cooked in an iron skillet. The “piadina,” without the topping, is a perfect accompaniment to one of the salads.
From Petaluma, take Route 116 through the verdant countryside of orchards, vineyards, hills and valleys and occasional sculptures created by some of the artists who moved to Sebastopol, Occidental and Forestville from the Bay Area. Sebastopol was once a Coast Miwok village, now seated between Santa Rosa and the Pacific Ocean. The town was once called “the Gravenstein apple capital of the world.” (Fortunately, these peaceful world capitals, though rivals, never fought an Apple and Egg War.)
Many of the plum and apple orchards have been replaced by vineyards. The city hosts an Apple Blossom Festival every April and a Gravenstein Apple Fair on the second weekend in August with live music, arts and crafts, food, wine, artisan cheeses and lots of Gravenstein apples.
The French Garden on the outskirts of town is an elegant restaurant in a pretty building with an enticing patio. The excellent food is French-inspired and features local ingredients. The restaurant offers a $30 three-course prix fixe menu along with an extensive a la carte menu.
Sebastopol’s West County Museum, in a restored downtown electric train station dating from 1917, focuses on western Sonoma County history, and includes movies filmed in Sonoma County, historical toys, eclectic collections from the community, World War II experiences of the home folks, the apple industry and early lighting devices.
There is not a lot to see in Forestville, but Canneti’s is a good Italian restaurant with specialties of oyster-filled ravioli, grilled Romaine hearts, halibut burgers and cannoli. The Case Ranch Inn is a delightful B&B in town. Rooms are well-appointed, breakfasts are excellent, and rates are reasonable. The Hartford Family Winery, nestled in the hills nearby, offers fine wines — some of which are served at the White House — for tasting and purchase in a splendid chateau in its vineyards. It’s well worth a visit.
Tiny Occidental is unique for its community-centered social movements in the 1960s and 1970s and peopled by Sonoma’s neo-hippies of the 1990s. Occidental Leather, a tool belt manufacturing company that started in a barn, has moved into town. Occidental has several restaurants, including Howard’s Station Cafe, famous in the region for its breakfasts, which occasionally include a wonderfully creamy polenta.
If you follow Route 116 farther northwest, you will arrive at Guerneville on the Russian River and, ultimately, the Pacific. Heading north on 101, you will reach Healdsburg, featuring galleries, antique shops, restaurants and a unique fan museum.
Wherever you go in Sonoma, there will be vine-covered hills, wineries and grapes galore.
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