🍇California Travels ~ Fourth Leg ~ Sonoma🍇

The journey through California continues as we now head up through San Francisco to the Sonoma area and the famous wine country. On our way, we stumbled upon the Dry Creek area that was teeming with quaint vineyards each one beckoning us to come in and stay awhile. Each tasting room boasted a different flair and personality. We especially enjoyed the Dry Creek Vinyard Winery with its relaxed atmosphere and very friendly people. Oh, and the Pinot Noir was superb!

We drove miles through the Russian River Valley area and Sonoma. Beautiful hillsides loaded with grapevines that are perfectly lined up offering a future bounty of delicious fruit awaiting a harvest at the end of the summer. It is a beautiful area. Because we were traveling with our 13-year-old son, this trip was more about "seeing" the vineyards rather than actually stopping in each one.

Next, we headed to Sebastopol to visit a young man I met 25 years ago while on a mission trip to Romania. Sammy was a young, Romanian man who guided us and translated for us through a two-week trip to orphanages and through the mountains where we held vacation Bible school for the kids.

Sammy is married and has three, beautiful children. I was super excited to meet his family and to see his parents again who have now relocated to the US. I have kept up with Sammy over the years but we have never been able to make an in-person visit happen until this trip! I am so proud of the life he has built with his beautiful family. 

While there, they took us on two excursions, the Armstrong Redwood Forest and, the Bodega Bay area. Both are breathtaking in completely different ways and only about, 30-miles from one another. It is amazing how these very unique areas are geographically close.

From a real estate perspective, they bought the beautiful lot pictured above and plan to build a gorgeous home there. I let them know I would be waiting for this to be built and would be back to stay for about a month! The site is breathtaking.

This was a very special part of our trip! Re-connecting with old and new friends. Perfection! And, Cayden had a blast finally being able to hang out with kids his own age. It was hard to say goodbye but we still had one more excursion and that was to meet our own, Kathleen Daniels, Probate & Trust Specialist in San Jose for the final leg of our trip.

Thank you for continuing to come along with us as we discover the beautiful state of California!