SF to Seattle Trip Report (installment plan)

[Clarkmeister]

After much research, input from the 2+2 forum and coordination with friends, the final itinerary shook out as follows (consider this the up-front cliff’s notes):

Day 1 – Arrive in San Jose, hook up with Sucker.
Day 2 – Passport Day for Santa Cruz Mountain wineries with Sucker, Boris, Diablo and friends.
Day 3 – SF touristy spots, Alcatraz, dinner with Tommy, drinks with Diablo.
Day 4 – Brief Napa stop, spa in Calistoga, CA.
Day 5 – Lake Shasta, Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR.
Day 6 – Arrive in Will-AM-ette Valley, have nice dinner, relax and read.
Day 7 – Hot air balloon ride, tour of Willamette Valley wineries.
Day 8 – One last winery stop, dinner in Seattle, night in Anacortes, WA with friend.
Day 9 – Friend gives us a tour of the naval base and Deception Pass state park.
Day 10 – Pike Street Market, fly home from Sea-Tac.

I’m going to keep this as a general trip report, and add in wine detail in a separate thread.

Day 1

So it was with great excitement that Clarkmistress and I hopped on a plane to San Jose.



One of the smarter things I did on the trip was change my car reservation. I use Hertz and like renting Camry’s because they are pretty cheap at usually $45/day or so. But they didn’t have their NeverLost navigation available in a Camry. So I thought it through and changed to a Taurus to get the nav. Good choice. My only comment is that their nav system is decidedly below-average when dealing with efficient on-off of highways and especially bad in downtown areas. That, and my Taurus had a nasty ding on the front left fender. Bah.

Of note is our shuttle bus driver was basically insane. Slammed the door shut on someone, drove super fast, loved to slam on the breaks, and if your stop came up, you best get the eff off the buss if you didn't want to make another lap around the facility.

We arrived at the Sucker’s place around 10:30 without mishap. Sucker’s friend The Count was there with his fiancée. Sucker cracked open a few bottles of Testarossa and we had a had a nice relaxing evening of wine and conversation.

Day 2

The next morning went pretty smoothly. A little breakfast at a cute little place called the Coupa Café. Good stuff.



The plan from there was for Boris to pick us up in a rented van along with about 15 others. Predictably with a group that large, things were running a few minutes late, but things more or less went off without a hitch.

I’ll leave a lot of the winery detail for the wine thread, but we hit the following wineries:

Testarossa
Burrell School
Byington
Savannah-Chanelle
Fellom Ranch
Naumann
Ridge

Hitting 7 wineries out of like 30 looks good until one considers how we accomplished it. Our slightly inefficient path looked something like this:




But, given that Boris was able to score us such an easy to spot vehicle (there are surpsingly few fire engine red passenger vans around), as well as sacrificed his time to drive, it seems a small price to pay. Maybe a larger price than an actual limo driver, but still a small price.

Just a quick comment on the wineries. I wasn’t sure what everyone meant by “that place is too corporate” when talking about the wineries. After Passport Day, I know. Ridge was very disappointing and sterile. Limited tastings, not particularly friendly. The other wineries were all much more warm and welcoming, especially considering that Passport Day brings in more than the normal % of recreational customers. The Winery of the Day was Boris’ selection of Byington.



Lots of selections available, good cheese and fruit spread, and several pretty good Cabs. Their Select cab was really quite nice and not absurdly priced (for Cali cab) at about $50 IIRC. They also had some nice glasses that were worth taking home as a souvenier. Assuming that someone *cough* Diablo *cough* didn't break them in the van later on.

After 5:00 rolled around and we couldn’t stay there anymore, the group went back near Sucker’s place for some dinner at the sportsbar down the street. Some Gordon Biersch really hit the spot. Two Diablo related events. First, on the advice of Haake who had some insider information, Diablo ordered the prime tip sandwhich “off the menu”. When two of them came, Diablo was confused until I pointed out that I ordered the same thing. I explained that it looked tasty based on the description in the menu. Second, Diablo and I had a prop bet on the authenticity of our waitress’s breasts, but it fell apart and as a result we never actually found out if they were real or not. Regardless, there’s little doubt they were impressive. Diablo et al had to catch a train back to S.F. and after a day and night of drinking, Clarkmistress, Sucker and I headed back to his pad and basically crashed while half watching the Rockets-Jazz game.

Day 3 - Day 10 as well as a separate winery report to come in future installments.