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Published: October 11th 2012
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Checked out of Calistoga this morning to ultimately head to San Francisco. First a few stops. The Petrified Forest is located near Calistoga and has a number of trees that were tumbled over 3,400,000 years ago. A volcano from nearby Mt. St. Helena erupted and now these giant redwoods, pines and firs are all turned to stone. It truly is remarkable to see what nature can do.
Next stop is the town of Healdsburg, where we were treated to a private wine tasting at Hauck Cellars by Greg Hauck. Many years ago, Sweetie and Greg were classmates at Milton High School. Almost ten (10) years ago, Greg and his wife Jennifer moved to California and worked for local winemakers with a vision to make their own wine. Not only have they done this but have been winning local wine tasting competitions for the past five (5) years. Greg was very gracious and we tasted six (6) wines of Hauck Cellars including the 2012 Gold Medal and Best in Class Cabernets. Reds may be the strong suit but the Sauvignon Blanc and Rose' were both excellent and will be found at the Brown household in the future. You can visit and
purchase wine at his website
www.hauckcellars.com - or hit Center Street in Healdsburg for a tasting.
Before we left Healdsburg (a really beautiful town with lots of shops, restaurants and inns), we had a great lunch at Pizzando (a Greg recommendation). We split a salad of romaine hearts with sunflower dressing; a very creamy and light dressing with sunflower seeds. Next was a pizza with ricotta, roasted garlic, kale, spicy fennel sausage and hen of the woods mushrooms. Yum, Yum!! This pizza was terrific with a thin crust that was scarred from the high heat pizza oven. Adding a drizzle of spicy pepper oil made this the perfect pizza. Onward we march to that City by the Bay.
Sweetie scored us a room at Holiday Inn at Fisherman's Wharf (thank you Hotel Indigo in Nashville for all of those points!)... a perfect location for touring San Francisco! We unloaded our belongings and hit the Wharf for some sightseeing, in particular, the Musee' Mechanique which Sweetie blew threw during a scavenger hunt with her company in April. The Museum is a warehouse full of old style games, player pianos, fortune tellers and other oddities that Sweetie thinks are cool
and made us explore - check out some of the pics. AHole kicked some baseball butt on Sweetie on an old-fashioned baseball mechanical game. Some of the machines were over 100 years old and still working. AHole pulled his card and refused Sweetie a photo booth session but all ended well - she'll trick him into it tomorrow!
The plan was to go to Grotto #9 recommended by friends and family but a shiny retro style building caught Sweetie's eye so we went in for just "a drink". The restaurant is called the Franciscan and has been on the Wharf since 1957 (a perfect year, just ask Lamar!) The restaurant had been renovated in 2005 and is just really gorgeous inside - white tile and chrome and red and literally right on the water. I think the only time you can't see the bay is if you sit at the bar. Drinks led to an appetizer of Coppa Salami and Burrata Mozzarella with Sourdough Bread (we can't get enough of this bread!) The appetizer led to dinner - a terrific house salad with "toybox" tomatoes, avocado and a really good viniagrette which we split. Sweetie went for linguine with
clams which was so-so. The win tonight goes to Lamar with his first Dungeness crab - he donned his bib and went to work! We've created a Crab Monster!
After The Franciscan, we stumbled into a nearby bar called The Parlor. Very cool set up - me thinks we will stop in for baseball tomorrow... Tomorrow is Muir Woods and Redwoods and Golden Gate Park for sure - a little nature time...
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