Skipping Town

With our departure approaching fast, we loaded up the car this weekend for a whirlwind goodbye tour of some of our favorite places in California. We set out late Friday afternoon and drove up through Clear Lake, a down-at-the-heels community full of trailer parks, diners, RVs, and a huge, gorgeous lake, which always seems to us like a place you’d go if you were in the witness protection program—in the middle of nowhere, an easy place to disappear. Our destination was Ukiah, a small town we stumbled upon on one of our very first road trips three years ago. There isn’t much in Ukiah except a great restaurant, the Ukiah Brewing Company; a cute bakery; and a farmer’s market. But there’s something peaceful about the place, and School Street, the main shopping street, is full of cute shops. Dinner Friday night, breakfast at the bakery Saturday morning, and a stroll through the farmer’s market kicked off our weekend tour. Next stop, Saturday afternoon: a market in Boonville for sandwiches, an...

It’s hot again. High-90s, not a hint of the famed “Delta breeze” (but is there ever?). To escape our quickly heating-up apartment Saturday we joined Beth and Nate and the babies for lunch in Sonoma. It wasn’t much cooler there; usually wine country tends to be a bit more bearable. Nonetheless, we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant just off the main plaza, then wandered around for a bit. There was a wine-tasting festival going on, with a band, and lots of veteran tasters walking around with wine glasses in hand, and the requisite peppering of aging hippies, one walking a large parrot. While Beth and Nate did a little shopping in a kids’ store, they challenged us to keep an eye on baby Henry. After about three minutes of cleaning up a variety of things tossed in his (adorable) wake and chasing him up and down a small ramp and etc., Andrew and I were exhausted. I’m pretty sure Beth and Nate were secretly laughing. On the way home, Andrew and I stopped at The Outlets to begin our shopping f...