Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Carl and I got up early and headed to Mountain View to meet up with the Shreiners. We rolled in around 10:05 AM (a few minutes late… woops), packed up the Shreiner’s Outback, then headed north. We made a quick detour to the hills just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Shreiner’s showed us the old military installations that were on the hills. Shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, experts in the U.S. wanted to bolster the west coast military presence and thus made numerous bunkers and missile silos in the hills north of San Francisco.

We made it to Healdsburg around 12:45 and grabbed a quick bite to eat at a local deli/grocery store. While there, I picked up some additional supplies (mmm…. salt and pepper chips…). We also got some more water since it was going to be a bit (but not excessively like last time) warm in the valley.

We hit up three wineries that day. Two were in Healdsburg, one of which was Dave’s favorite. The last one we went to was actually just a winery with a tasting spot in the Sonoma town square. I found that their port wine was actually decent if you had it with dark chocolate.

After the tastings, we walked around the square, then went into the Cheese Factory (not Cheesecake, Cheese) where I bought some very delicious pepper jack cheese. I also got some crackers with which to have the cheese, since eating cheese by the wedge doesn’t sound quite so tempting.

After Sonoma, we went to North Beach and had an absolutely awesome dinner at an Italian restaurant (I really want to say Ristorante Franchesco, but I honestly can’t remember). The antipasti was awesome, and the Veal Parmigiana was even better. We ended the night with a cup of gelato at a local shop, then headed back to Mountain View.