Where we’re going on Sunday

Me and L are going on a day trip this Sunday! It will be our very first excursion since the first weekend in May when we went to LA and I went 80 miles in the wrong direction (160 extra miles for our trip – two hours!).

Needless to say, we are excited. So, instead of just heading out in the car without a destination, which can cause hunger and irritability, I went to Google to find mini destinations – stops, if you will – along our looping route through the beautiful Napa and Sonoma counties. And what I found when I got to Google is that they have altered their Google maps so that now, you can enter a string of directions, a continuous route and it will keep mapping it for you! I am so in love with it I can hardly speak. So here are our desination points:

Dean and Deluca in St. Helena. I know it’s a chain, but it’s still a loverly specialty store that has delicious deli snacks we’ll pack up and take along on our drive. Plus, driving there is gorgeous. Wineries (fields of grapes), even if you don’t drink, truly are a thing of beauty.

Then we’ll head to the Matos Cheese Factory in Sebastopol to pick up some homemade local St. George and see the cows.

After that, it’s apple pickin’ also in Sebastopol if the weather’s not too hot. Our apples are all ready here in California. In Sebastopol, it is mostly Gravensteins. Up at the farm, we have a grafted apple tree with five varieties on the same tree. The galas are crisp an delicious. I’ll be eating two today! But there’s not enough on that tree for pie and sauce, and of course, you can’t climb it!

Then we’ll go to Bodega Bay and sit down and stare at the icy waters! You totally can’t swim – it’s about 50 magrees – but you can touch your toes in it and feel happy!

Finally, we’ll head to Target in San Raphael to get plastic storage bins for all my belongings. Why you ask? Because the upstairs neighbor (who moved out yesterday) decided to take a shower in her claw foot tub and allow about four gallons of shower water to run on the floor, which gravity then pulled down through her floor – my ceiling – and deposited on top of every piece of clothing I own. I am now afeared of putting anything in that closet should an upstairs neighbor be dumb enough to put the shower curtain on the OUTSIDE of the claw foot tub, rather than in (think about it) and ruin my shit yet again.

Also in that closet: sleeping bag, photos, suitcases, 70% of all worldly possessions. The photos, thank God, made it out unscathed. The suitcase, called “Star Fifty” was dead anyway and this helped me throw it out, so that was also good. Bad was: $90 dry cleaning bill for clothes, $12 laundering bill, and a week of a rickety fan blowing at the wall to dry it out before they repaint. Good again: landlord paying dry cleaning bill and idiotproofing resealing upstairs floor/base board. Extra good: I’m getting a light in the hallway, which did not have a light before, which made it difficult to get my clothes out of the dark closet (and also made the closet feel creepy). Bonus!

We deserve a day trip! Don’t you think?

Tags: apple picking, daytrip, gabriel farm, leaky ceilings, matos cheese factory, napa, nice landlords for one, sonoma, st. george cheese, stupid people, sunday driver, target