{"id":7507,"date":"2018-08-02T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=7507"},"modified":"2018-08-02T09:40:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T16:40:08","slug":"california-road-trip-golf-wine-and-i-dont-remember-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=7507","title":{"rendered":"California Road Trip: Golf, Wine and . . . I Don’t Remember (continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonoma\/Napa<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Buena Vista wine cave<\/p><\/div>\n

Tuesday<\/u> \u2013 It\u2019s a driving day from Paso Robles<\/strong> to Sonoma<\/strong> over the Golden Gate Bridge<\/strong> with a stop in Sausalito<\/strong> for lunch \u2013 a beautiful day in the \u2018City by the Bay\u2019.<\/strong> We arrive in Sonoma just in time for our private guided tour of the Buena Vista Winery<\/strong> in Sonoma Valley<\/strong>. Buena Vista is the oldest commercial winery in California, <\/strong>founded in 1857<\/strong>. Our guide, who called himself \u2018The Count\u2019<\/strong>, portrayed himself as the original founder of the winery and regaled us with stories of how he had come to create the winery as well as his death by alligator in Central America. Dressed in 1850\u2019s garb, replete with a knob handle cane, he took us deep into the Buena Vista caves that were carved out of solid rock many years earlier and was now serving as the \u2018tasting\u2019 and \u2018barrel\u2019 rooms for storing wine in a perfect temperature.<\/p>\n

Our hotel was just off the Sonoma Plaza<\/strong>, which was buzzing with the \u2018Every Tuesday during the Summer\u2019<\/strong> farmer\u2019s market, including food trucks, fresh vegetable carts, cold beer and a live band. We hung there for a while, but opted to have dinner at the Swiss Hotel<\/strong>, a favorite of my parents who had retired in Sonoma. We were seated in the back patio for a delicious dinner on a delightful evening.<\/p>\n

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Silverado Golf Course<\/p><\/div>\n

Wednesday \u2013 9:30 tee time at beautiful Silverado County Club in Napa<\/strong>. Thanks to our golf pro Matt Kliner, we were able to get on this beautiful private golf course that is used for professional tournaments. Beautiful golf course, beautiful day. After golf we had most of the afternoon free to cruise around the Sonoma Plaza or just relax. I took this time to visit my dearly departed best friend, Don Klapperich<\/strong>, who now resides in the Sonoma Military Cemetery<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0I reminded him of what a good best friend he was and how he was the person who most influenced my life, and still does. We had a great conversation, although I must say he was a little quiet.<\/p>\n

For dinner, feeling very European, we bought some baguettes, cheese and wine and sat in our Sonoma Inn<\/strong> patio on a refreshingly cool summer evening and ate dinner.<\/p>\n

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Sterling Winery<\/p><\/div>\n

Thursday<\/u> \u2013 We started our day by driving north over the mountain range that separates the Sonoma from the Napa valleys and hit the northern-most town in \u2018wine country\u2019, Calistoga<\/strong>, where the ladies did some shopping, mostly for windows. First winery stop was Sterling<\/strong> winery, which requires a gondola ride from the valley floor to the top of a hill, where you can taste their delicious wine while enjoying a spectacular view of the Napa valley.\u00a0\u00a0 We stopped in the next town going south, Saint Helena<\/strong> for lunch, on our quest to find the Prisoner<\/strong> winery, as we wanted to get Ron, who gave us the Sprinter for the week, and his wife, Shelly, a case of their favorite wine. We were to learn that the Prisoner winery is temporarily shut down, but the wine is still available at Total Wine<\/strong> \u2013 where we got the case of wine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Silver Oak<\/p><\/div>\n

Being a collector of Silver Oak<\/strong> wine, Jack wanted to make sure we got to the winery, which was just a few miles down the road. We drive through the city of Napa proper and back to Sonoma.<\/p>\n

Fresno?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cocktail cruise on ‘Lake Spradling’<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One doesn\u2019t necessarily think of Fresno as a must-see destination on a California golf-wine trip, but we wanted to visit our good friends, Don & Marilyn Spradling<\/strong>, who moved from Yorba Linda to Fresno five years ago to be with family. Don reminded us that Fresno is the leading grape-producing city in the world; while there are a few wineries, most of the grapes are for eating and raisins. After dinner, our evening was spent on the Spradling\u2019s boat on the lake their home sits beside \u2013 a beautiful evening. As for golf, the Spradlings belong to Copper River Country Club<\/strong>, which is where we played early on Saturday morning, to beat the 107-degree heat, prior to heading home after a great road trip with great friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonoma\/Napa Tuesday \u2013 It\u2019s a driving day from Paso Robles to Sonoma over the Golden Gate Bridge with a stop in Sausalito for lunch \u2013 a beautiful day in the \u2018City by the Bay\u2019. We arrive in Sonoma just in … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,813],"tags":[2898,2904,2903,2902,2901,2900,2899],"class_list":["post-7507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-travel","tag-buena-vista-winery","tag-copper-river-country-club","tag-fresno","tag-prisoner-wine","tag-silver-oak-winery","tag-silverado-golf-club","tag-sonoma-plaza"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Silver-Oak.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-1X5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7507"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7524,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507\/revisions\/7524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}