Napa Valley

On the road... we bypassed Frisco to Napa via Sonoma, where I read about a must-visit diner.  Being our first diner experience this trip in America, it needed to be a good one!  The Fremont diner on HWY 121.  Upon enetering the HWY we were faced with beautiful rolling green hills covered in grapevines and mansion like chateaus / wineries.  Napa Valley wine region, we have truley arrived.  I had taken some notes of 24 hours in Napa from a San Franciscan Chef noting all the must sees and do's along the way and in the area.  After our small tasting at Freemont diner (as we didn't want to ruin our appetite for the day of food sampling) we enjoyed a Fremont ham, creole mustrard with lardo plum and cardamon jam buttermilk biscuit as well as a mini fried chicken sandwhich with fremont pickles and house made mayo.   

Next stop was the Oxbow public market that was on the list to see and experience but we did not enjoy this as much it was very commercial and was filled with chain-like shops, so we got the hell out of there and next stop out of Napa en route to our camp site was the quaint cute Yontville, where we stopped at the local artisan bakery and got a baguette for our picnic. We also stopped at a public vegetable patch and picked some local, organic produce.  The space was massive and everything was flourishing in the beautiful sunshine and this made me so happy and eager to get a patch of my own when we finally get a house and never to have to buy from the supermarkets ever again! This is the way it should be.

Two last stops - we got a local zinfandel grape variety red wine which is renowned mostly in the Napa region, and lastly a final stop at the sunshine markets for some yummy gourmet local and french cheeses before arriving late afternoon to our home for the night at the Bothe Napa Valley State Park.  Set in a thick Oak forest this was a perfect location for our special picnic and perfect ambiance for the evening.  We went on a little walk into the forest at sunset and experienced our first sightings of deer.