Day 32, Sunday, July 17

After another lazy morning and a breakfast of scrambled eggs, fresh strawberries, and cantaloupe we decided to head into town (Calistoga) and find out what wineries were in the area and available for touring/tastings. On our ride into Napa on Saturday, both Jeanette and I were stunned by just how may wineries were there. It seemed that every curve in the road had another winery on it, so we figured that some advice on what to see would be prudent, advice of the sort that you’d get at the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce. By the time we got into town it was about 11am and the temperature was already around 95 degrees. HOT, HOT, HOT. Jeanette had on my hot weather jacket, but I was wearing my one piece Aerostitch Roacrafter suit. I was literally basting in my own juices. Even once we were out of the riding suits we felt like we were roasting on a spit. We’d been told that Calistoga’s Chamber of commerce was "behind the train depot and a bit hard to find". What a humorous understatement. The only sign for it was half hidden at the back of an alley beside the old train depot, and the Chamber itself was a trailer office (like you see on construction sites) completely hidden from view by trees and storage trailers until you were right on top of it. Also, the sign in the window said "Open" and there was a woman sitting at the desk inside but the door was locked! Turns out that she was the only person working that day and had come in the back door and had completely forgotten to unlock the front even though it was already closing in on noon! After reading the available literature we decided to forgo any tours due to cost in favor of just riding around the valley and stopping wherever our fancies were struck. Our main stop was at Berringer Brothers winery. We were somewhat surprised to see that the tour of the facility (which we’d have had to wait a more than an hour for) was a bit expensive as was the wine tasting, neither of which we chose to participate in either activity. The combination the 100 degree heat and the seemingly prevalent attitude of the Berringer employees that the tourists were an unfortunate and annoying side affect of working at a winery made our visit something I’d not choose to repeat. Maybe it’d have been different if the weather hadn’t been so brutally hot and muggy, but neither Jeanette nor I deal well with hot weather, and both of us came away from the visit with a sour taste in our mouths. At that point we decided to head back to our camp site hoping that it’d be cooler for being in the woods. That turned out to be the absolute best decision. Once there we took a nice COOL hike along one of the park’s creeks and then headed back to our campsite for dinner. The simple spaghetti dinner we’d planned to have turned out to have flavor fitting of a gourmet restaurant. I don’t know whether it was our utterly exhausted state or our thankfulness for a respite from the heat, but we both swore that the spaghetti sauce we concocted was the best either of us had ever eaten. Combine that with garlic bread heated over the camp fire and another 6-pack of barley and hops and you’ve got yourself a GREAT evening! We both gorged ourselves and I don’t think either of us even rolled over once we turned in for the night!