Got Lost... Found a Cherry Stand and a Forest?

Leaving nature never felt so exciting and liberating. Clearly the guy who wrote about nature being so free and full of clean air, didn't understand the concept that some of us lived perfectly happy lives void of the problems Mother Nature brought.

Armed with a stack of brochures that I've collected since starting the trip, it was time to weed through it. The dreams of visiting Oregon and central California were quickly tossed into a recycling bin as were all the other promising sights that the Redwoods National Forest and Humboldt County offered. It was time to return to the land of the living, and by that, I mean wine.

Yes. If you're going to go through Napa, you must visit at least one vineyard. So this time, I decided to venture through the northern part and found myself in Greece by way of Calistoga. The picture of the winery honestly looked like a Greek monastery set on the high cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was even more intriguing to know that it took a 5 minute cable car ride just to get the winery. Wait, Greek Monastery? Wine tasting? Cable Car ride? I'm sold. Sterling Vineyards here I come.

Well. Not so much really. As it turns out, this place was far. And I mean far. It was tucked in a remote corner past a lot of other wineries, through miles and miles of winding roads and just when I was about to give up, even more roads and hills of brown grasses and fields appeared along with trucks of cherry stands from local farmers. Clearly there was a boon in the cherry crop that week. Since the only hope of getting there was through the GPS, the same GPS that was going to send me into the ocean from Hwy 101 in Humboldt County just a few days ago, we decided to get some cherries for the ride to our doom. Even the lovely lady selling her baskets of fruit added, "Are you sure you're going to a winery? And not a petrified forest? There's only the forest up that way."

Yes this is exactly what I needed to hear. Past the forest, through more winding roads hoping to see fields of grapes again. At this point, I wondered if maybe the GPS was just confused and was just looking for the longest way back to San Francisco. Either way, there was no other thing to do but to keep going forward.