Wines, whales and woods...

Just north of San Francisco are the famous vineyards and wineries of Napa Valley. I very generously let Claire drive the van for a day so that I was free to do the arduous chore of tasting wine. Purely for research you understand. There are hundreds of wineries along the valley and if, like us, you don't know the area, choosing which ones to visit can be a bit of a lottery. From experience, we have learnt to avoid the big posh-looking wineries with long driveways and immaculate topiary. They tend to be a bit snobby. Not the sort of place to welcome some idiot in a newly acquired Golden State Warriors T-shirt. Instead, we found that the smaller, slightly more rustic-looking ones tended to be a bit more friendly. First stop was a great little winery which had taken the novel step of dying their Sauvignon Blanc green as it was St Patrick's Day. It's a bit odd drinking green wine because your mind is telling you it should be minty or something. Once over that initial shock, however, I was able to sample about four of their other wines before deciding that the Pinot Noir was definitely the nicest. But I couldn't be sure there weren't better wines elsewhere in the valley – so we drove to the next winery to check. This one had a list of five wines that were available for tasting that day but, having first tried all those, I casually mentioned to our "pourer" that I'd seen they did a couple of wines that weren't on that list. Happy that I was taking an interest in their full repertoire, she promptly fetched me a couple of those to try too. What a nice girl. At the next winery the woman pouring the tastings was amused to find that I'd arrived with a 2-for-1 voucher that enabled me to sample their full range of whites as well as their lovely reds. That hadn't happened before, she said, and so spent a couple of minutes deciding which order to pour them so as not to "overload" my palate. I had a lovely afternoon tasting those and was especially enamoured with the one she'd chosen to "finish me off" with. An appropriate choice of words it turned out, as I soon found myself craving a nap.

The next day, feeling slightly groggy, I was a little concerned when Claire announced that there was a "geezer up the road" she wanted to see. It was soon made clear that she was referring to a hot water geyser and that there was indeed one just a couple of miles away. It was called "Old Faithful" but I feel I must stress that it wasn't the famous "Old Faithful" which resides in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming. No, this was a much smaller chap that lived just outside Calistago, California. But, to be fair, he was very regular. Every seven minutes as it turned out. In fact, with such regularity did the gush of hot water spurt out of the ground that, as a natural cynic, I couldn't help wondering whether it wasn't being 'assisted' in some way. I'm assured it wasn't…

Next, we drove up the coast to the quaint little cliff-top town of Mendocino to go whale watching. Each year, from February to April, Grey Whales migrate north along the coast and there is a great opportunity to spot them doing so from the cliffs. I was very excited by this, though that's probably because in my head I had images of whales leaping out of the sea in slow motion or, at the very least, a big flash of tail fin like you used to see in those Athena posters of the 1980s. After staring at a lifeless ocean for an hour or so, however, you find yourself desperate to see anything that is remotely different to crashing waves. "Look at those seals!" Claire shouted at one point. "Oh wow!" I cried as I excitedly fired off about a hundred photographs of what would turn out to be some large clumps of floating seaweed. A little while later we found ourselves mesmerised by a seagull. But, eventually, our patience paid off – we saw some real seals, Claire spotted a couple of dolphins and, in the middle distance, we saw the distinctive plumes of water being ejected from the blowholes of about four or five Grey Whales as they made their way to Alaska. Not quite glossy poster-worthy scenes but absolutely amazing nonetheless.

One of my favourite places this week was Glass Beach at Fort Bragg. Unbelievably, during the 1940s and 50s, this area's local residents used to dump all their rubbish straight into the sea. Everything from cans to cookers to cars were just flung off the cliff. Then in the 60s, they came to their senses and started trying to clean up the area. The legacy of this mindlessness is now, strangely, a place of surreal beauty. Over the years all the glass that was dumped here (jars, bottles, windows) has been broken down and then smoothed off by the motion of the waves to create a whole beach of clear glass 'pebbles' that give the place its name. Jewels of green, brown and clear glass glisten in the tide and it's actually very pretty. Not so pretty, but weirdly fascinating, is the random assortment of old rubbish and scrap metal that has become encased in the rocks here. We spotted spark plugs, engine cogs, the rear axle of a truck, a rifle bullet and even the odd shoe poking out of the rock pools and cliff walls. The irony is that these days the authorities are trying to stop souvenir hunters removing stuff from the beach!

There are a lot of Giant Redwoods in this coastal area of northern California, and there seems to be a sort of local tradition of seeing how many wacky ways you can make these majestic trees into a tacky tourist attraction. We saw one tree that actually had a little gift shop built into the trunk and another felled trunk that had been hollowed out and turned into a house. At a town called Leggett we found a "drive-thru tree" – I actually liked this one but sadly the hole wasn't big enough to allow our RV through. And we were appalled by "Confusion Hill" a sort of theme park where lots of trees have been carved into all sorts of nonsense. The "confusion" for me was why these people thought it was OK to whittle a 2,000-year-old tree into a gaudy totem pole featuring juggling clown-bears and the like. Sometimes, simply naming a tree seems to draw people in. We visited a tree which was named "The Grandfather", I think due to it being exceptionally wide – a comparison that I'm sure a lot of grandfathers might take umbrage at. To really appreciate these mammoth trees, however, I recommend driving along "Avenue Of The Giants", a wonderful 30-mile twisting road through the beautiful redwood groves. We got out half way along and went for a short trek through the prehistoric forest and it was genuinely awe-inspiring. You really feel like you've been shrunk. So, America, put down the chainsaw and go for a walk.

BURGER OF THE WEEK
The Jack And Coke BBQ Burger – this one is all about the sauce. A half pound burger, bacon, Cheddar cheese and "tobacco onions" with a Jack Daniels and Coca Cola barbecue sauce. Superb.