Weddingbee Blog

Though I am a sucker for all things chronological (am I? I don’t know, but it seemed like the right thing to say), I’m going to start at the end—with our honeymoon! I can’t wait to tell you all of the exciting wedding stories (and show you the beautiful pictures! I have seen the online gallery, and lo, it was good!), but while we Spaniels wait for the full disc, I thought I would regale you with the harrowing and heroic tale of…

(modified from logo at source)

Day 1 route (source)

As I mentioned before the wedding, Mr. Spaniel and I planned a road trip adventure for our honeymoon starting with a long (very, very long) drive from Malibu to Sebastopol, a small town in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County.

My camera never made it out of my luggage that day, so our story begins on Monday morning, when we decided to check out the view from the wetland preserve behind the Sebastopol Inn from the balcony.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than the parking lot on the other side!

Rather than sit and admire the view, we decided to start our vacation… and how else but with food? Some quick Yelping told us that Howard Station Cafe in neighboring Occidental was the best breakfast game in town, and we wouldn’t know any better, because it was so good we went there both days we were in the area. They had…

the lightest, fluffiest Belgian waffle I’ve ever had (with real maple syrup!)…

and this hot number! (Er, the coffee! It was organic, and really tasty!)

After packing away that yummy breakfast, we headed to our first winery stop: Iron Horse Vineyards (famous for its sparkling wines), which had a beautiful outdoor tasting room. Luckily, it was a gorgeous day, perfect for drinking chilled sparkling wines!

We tasted both a still and sparkling flight. The still was good, but the sparkling was better. One of the owners was pouring for us, and once she learned we were newlyweds, she gifted us a bottle of their Wedding Cuvée!

The cool wine was refreshing, but zapped me of the required energy to do more tastings, so we decided to skip Dutton Estate Winery (which is known for its pinot noirs) and Marimar Estate (which specializes in organic wines), which were the two other wineries we’d planned to visit after some quick research the night before, and neither of which I’d heard of until we arrived in Sebastopol. Instead, we headed off for a quick lunch, walked around town, took a nap, and headed back into Occidental for dinner at Bistro Des Copains (the higher-rated French Garden in Sebastopol was closed on Mondays). We decided that this would be our “big night out” of the trip—an obvious mistake, as we ended up having several more “big nights out” before the end of the week. So instead of ordering a glass of the house red, as I usually do when I’m feeling frugal, we “splurged” on $13 glasses of Dutton Estate Pinot Noir. And then I died and went to heaven and came back and drank some more wine, so we spent a few minutes regretting not making it to their tasting room during the day before deciding we’d go when they opened the following day before leaving for our next stop. Luckily, it was only a short drive away, so after another yummy breakfast, we headed over to Dutton for a tasting.

(They actually offer food and wine pairings, but we were too full to try it. Next time!)

We really, really enjoyed this tasting, not only because we tried three 90+ point pinot noirs, but also because the sommelier was really friendly, telling us all about the town, the families who lived there, who owned what restaurant and which vineyards leased land from whose backyard to grow their grapes, and we got the sense that it was really a community of people who like wine, rather than the huge and mostly impersonal wineries we’ve seen elsewhere (I’m looking at you, Napa!). But clearly the stories and the wine went a little to our heads, because we ended up joining our first wine club (mostly for the 30% discount on the four bottles of wine we ended up buying, but still). Oops!

After wandering around the vineyard for a little while, we started the short trek westward, stopping at the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve along the way. This was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

(For reference, Mr. Spaniel is about 6’2″)

If you’ve never been by, I highly recommend it if you’ll be anywhere near the area. It’s so green and quiet that it’s actually somewhat alarming (especially, I imagine, if you’re from a noisy city like Los Angeles!). Our next stop was just north of Jenner at the Timber Cove Inn.

Day 3 route (source)

TCI (because we’re tight like that, I can call it TCI) is a former artists’ retreat, and it’s not hard to tell why: it’s absolutely inspiring.

(One-third of the view from our balcony)

(One-third view on the other side of the balcony)

(The middle-third of the view from the balcony)

I pretty much would have been willing to spend our entire two days in Jenner watching the sky and the ocean from the sitting area in the suite (the panoramic views were visible from the room, which was surrounded by windows on three sides… no need to head out into the windy cold!), but Mr. Spaniel and I are movers and shakers! We had things to do! Well, we had more wineries to visit. Annapolis, CA (population… 85? 23?) is about halfway between Timber Cove and Gualala, and then seven miles up… or in… or around, I’m not really sure. At the top? is Annapolis Winery, a small, family-owned winery with a free tasting room (yay!). This wasn’t really our favorite wine—we left with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, but I’ve bought whites I liked as much for less than half the price—but it was probably our favorite winery… just look at the grounds!

(We both felt compelled to frolic about the meadow)

In fact, I couldn’t help but think that this would make a beautiful destination wedding venue in the summer, if convenience and accessibility aren’t your thing. Because TCI is so remote (there was pretty much nothing we could think of to do in the surrounding towns that was better than watching the ocean from our room) we didn’t really go anywhere else. It was far too beautiful to be bored! But after two too-short days, it was time to venture south for the second half of our honeymoon road trip adventure!