The Traveling Idiots-Where The Tuck Are They Now?: The Road Most Traveled and The Road Less Traveled

Sunday morning before leaving Tahoe we were able to squeeze in a little bit more fun. We rented bikes from a great vendor (Anderson Bike Rental) and did about a 14 mile ride on the Forest Bike Trail. This is a paved path through the National Forest on the Southwest side of the lake between South Lake Tahoe and Emerald Bay. If you do decide to hop on a bike check out Anderson's. They have been in business since 1978 and are passionate about what they do and provide excellent customer service. The lady that checked the bikes out to us (Sue) I'm pretty sure was a member of the Anderson family and she said they are now into the third generation of owning/operating this business. What really impressed me was her enthusiasm when she was telling us the route that would take us to the start of the actual path. I'll bet she's done that little spiel thousands of times over the years and it was just so enthusiastic and professional it really caught my attention. Most service related businesses could learn a lot from Andersons!
http://laketahoebikerental.com
The ride took us to Pope and Baldwin Beaches. Both were really nice although the Pope or the Baldwin brothers were no where to be seen. Below is a short video of some bears taking a little swim on Pope Beach yesterday. It would have been a blast to have been there when this was going on.
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-bears-take-a-swim-in-lake-tahoe-737114691626
The "Road Most Traveled" is leaving South Lake Tahoe on a Sunday afternoon. Getting there from Sacramento was about a two hours, getting back to Sacramento on Sunday afternoon was about double that time. We had a minor issue with the rental car and had to drop it by the airport and pick up a new car before driving the additional hour to Napa. All in all it turned into about a six hour trip but we arrived in Napa safely and semi-sane.
The "Road Less Traveled" was our outing yesterday (Tuesday) to the coast. We drove from Napa to Sonoma Coast State park by way of some wonderful back roads. On the drive over we went through the Sonoma Valley which has tons of vineyards and wineries. We did a great hike at Bodega Head and were joined along the trail by a mom and a couple of baby deer as you will see in one of the pictures below. We then drove up the coast to the small town of Jenner (no relation to Caitlyn) before turning inward along the Russian River and passing through the small towns of Duncans Mills, Monte Rio, Guerneville as well as a Redwood Forrest.
http://www.duncansmills.net
http://monterio.org
Sandwiched in between the two road trips was spending Monday here in Napa. Doing what you're supposed to do when you come to Napa which is visit the wineries. One suggestion on visiting this area, if at all possible do it on a weekdays when it is far less crowded. As we were driving in Sunday afternoon the traffic leaving was a sight to see. I think every Californian that wasn't at South Lake Tahoe was in Napa for the weekend. It's summer, the grapes are on the vine and getting ready for harvest, the weekday crowds are very manageable and its a blast!
http://www.vsattui.com
https://www.inglenook.com
OK a few fun facts on wine that we've learned:
There are over 450 wineries in the Napa area. We've got about 445 left to visit in the next couple of days.
It takes approximately a ton of grapes to make two barrels of wine.
A barrel contains right at 60 gallons which turns into 300 bottles of wine.
A grapevine can live and produce grapes for over 100 years although they are most productive when they are between 20-40 years of age in most regions.
The drier and more arid the climate the longer the vines live and produce, some of the vines in Australia are over 150 years of age. We'll be sure to swing by and pay our respects to those vines when we are down there later this year.
Sutter Home produces over 6 million bottles of zinfandel per year (hey, you can buy it at CVS and Wal-Mart and pretty much any where else that sells wine).
One of the wineries we visited today was the Inglenook Winery which is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and his family.
Mario Andretti also owns a winery in Napa.
Many of the vineyards have roses planted at the end of the rows. We didn't know if there was a purpose behind this or not so we did a little investigating. We learned that it was believed that the rose bushes would show signs of disease before the grapevines so they served as an early indicator for the growers allowing them to treat them before the crop was ruined................and we sure don't want to ruin the wine!