GratonInvasion

From Definitelynotsafe Wiki

Contents 1 The Basics 1.1 When 1.2 What 1.3 Where 1.4 Who 1.5 Cars 1.6 Cost 2 General Route 3 Places of Interest 3.1 Freestone Bakery 3.2 Drive to Calistoga 3.3 Lunch In Calistoga 3.4 Drive out to Stewart's Point 3.5 Drive from Stewart's Point to Tamales Bay 3.6 Dinner in Tomales Bay 3.7 Drive out to San Rafael 4 Comments

The Basics

I'd like people to see where I came from. There's awesome things there and since most of you are going to be spending at least a summer a few hours away... I figure we go up and invade quickly.

When

Right now... Sunday September 7th looks like the best time that might work. Let's meet at my parents house in Graton around 10:30. We'll end in San Rafael (right next to the bay bridge and not too far from the golden gate) at around 20:00 - 21:00 or so.

What

Food and driving. No time for wine tours, that's an entirely different ballgame and can take up days in and of itself. This is all about food and beautiful landscapes.

Where

Sonoma, Napa and Marin counties.

Who

• DJC
• RSi
• numist
• Tautoz
• jauricchio

Cars

DJC driving from whoever he stays with on the night of the 6th: (Holds three more comfortably, four uncomfortably)

• available
• available
• available
• middle seat, don't use unless we have to.

Cost

We'll try and keep it under $50 not including gas. Expect to spend about $20 for dinner, $10 for lunch and some other money for where that becomes not true, random snacks and drinks as well as money spent on delicious bread.

General Route

• Various Bay Area Locations to Graton
• Graton to Freestone
• Freestone to Calistoga
• Calistoga to Stewarts Point
• Stewarts Point to Tomales Bay
• Tomales Bay to San Rafael
• San Rafael to Various Bay Area Locations

Places of Interest

Freestone Bakery

Delicious bread, the best I've ever had. Yelp agrees: http://www.yelp.com/biz/wild-flour-bread-freestone

Drive to Calistoga

We'll head over the hills that separate the Sonoma and Napa wine valleys. I know of a nice route that should yield pretty views of the world.

Lunch In Calistoga

An excellent BBQ place. For the vegetarians get more delicious bread from the bakery. It can be a meal in and of itself. :) http://www.yelp.com/biz/busters-southern-bbq-and-bakery-calistoga (Alternatively, I'm sure there's a vegetarian friendly place nearby we can figure out?)

Drive out to Stewart's Point

There's a road out to Stewart's Point that is shockingly awesome. Hairpin turns, nice views from heights, nice views from valleys, twisty little passages through forests and confusion over whether or not the road is actually two lanes or not. (It changes depending on where you are in the road.) It's shocking the road is paved all the way through and I'm expecting it to take 1.5-2 hours to drive a 42 mile segment of this road.

Drive from Stewart's Point to Tamales Bay

Another beautiful drive down the California coast on Highway 1. Part of this drive has some amazing cliffs.

Dinner in Tomales Bay

Do you like BBQ Oysters? Good. This place has BBQ'd oysters. Good ones. For those who don't like BBQ'd Oysters, it's still an excellent little seafood dive (with some presumably vegetarian menu items as well for those who hate meat) that looks out directly over the bay (and in fact... the bay is under the dining room) and provides an atmosphere that's fairly unique. When they say seat yourself, they mean it. They've gotten better in recent years about reminding new folks about their seat yourself policy, but there's been plenty of times I've been there and they've happily let people stand there confused for awhile at the front door.

Don't get me wrong, the people who work there are really nice, they just have their own ways of doing things. Anyways, yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/tonys-seafood-restaurant-marshall

Drive out to San Rafael

We'll finish the day out by taking a nice drive through Point Reyes and to San Rafael. Might be dark by this point in the day but when we get to San Rafael we'll all meet at the tradition gas station jumping off point (anyone who's traveled south with numist knows what I mean) and we'll fill up and go the various different ways. I think I'll be going back down into the Bay Area for the night, so people who are riding in my car can make it back all the way to the bay.

Comments

Plans are naturally, up in the air. We could try and make this a two day thing if there's interest. If there's a part that sounds boring we can cut it and I've got plenty of alternatives... it's a bit driving heavy at the moment... but really, a lot of the drives are spectacular, but might be a little bit driving overload.

Anyways, let me know. I already sketched things out and we can do this and really not a whole lot of more in a 10:30 - 20:30 period. There's a little bit of leeway in there for the sake of "let's go do this awesome thing" but it's not like we'll have hours to spare. Which is somewhat unfortunate.