Day 7 - An awesome day reminiscent of Italy!

Saturday, September 20, 2014:

We stayed at Willits, CA last night in a lovely little RV park off Hwy. 101, the Golden Rule RV Park. We loved the wildlife here and the quiet in spite of being close to the highway.

In the campsite at Golden Rule RV park

Wildlife abounds here; the Jays were not a bit afraid of us

Johnnie is living large at the campsite

Knowing that we have a short drive to Novato where we are staying the next three nights, we decided to take our time leaving this morning and then to stop along the way at a couple vineyards.

The first vineyard is Barra Vineyards in Redwood Valley, CA. They boast all organic, estate grown grapes. It has a nice tasting room with a beautiful fountain. Their wines are nice and we met some people from South Carolina, and a man from San Jose, originally from Germany. It was fun visiting with them. Barra also has some good jellys and mustards so I bought a jar of Tequila Jalapeño Mustard which will be great on a braut.

Barra Winery tasting room

From there we went to Testa Vineyards just down the road. As it turns out, Testa is a small winery run by a woman who is the 4th generation of the Testa family to farm this land. Maria Martinson's great grandparents immigrated from Italy bringing with them cuttings of the stems of their favorite Zinfandel grapes. Her grandparents ran the winery but by the time of her father's generation, their land was farmed for other things. Maria made her first experimental wine several years ago. At the urging of her family she began to revive the growing of grapes, and gradually bought back all the family land. Many other families in the area immigrated from Italy at the same time as her great grandparents, which was a common occurrence in that era. Sometimes neighbors or entire villages immigrated together. What a great story!

Maria's great grandparents

We were tasting her wine and visiting when the couple that is renting their guesthouse for the season, Carolyn and Walter came by. Walter has the fish he caught from their pond and Carolyn has a salad. Next thing you know, we are invited to lunch with them and another visitor, Hardy, the German man from San Jose (I didn't get his last name) we first met at Barra. Maria made pasta and fixed the fish, and we all sat around for several hours having an Italian-style meal and visiting. It was wonderful!

Testa vineyards

Pond where the fish were caught: bass and crappie

The couple that we met, Walter and Carolyn Jensen are from San Diego area (Chargers fans!) but staying in Redwood Valley until October for the filming of the book Walter wrote called "Their Unbridled Rivalry". I bought a copy of his book which he signed for me. It will be interesting reading. Walter wrote from his experiences as a medical doctor at Scripps in LaJolla, CA.

Hardy works for a company called Nvidia that builds high powered 3D computer video cards. He is an interesting fellow and really smart. We also met a couple who stopped by while we were eating that is from Federal Way. They were traveling in a convertible -- now that's the way to go!

We arrived in Novato about 4pm. The place we are staying, Novato RV Park, is right off the highway and very urban. Mostly there are mobile homes here, and some RVs that appear to be long term residents, but there are a few spots for travelers. We wedged our little camper in between the gigantic rigs on either side.

Full services here including decent WIFI and DirecTV!

Our cozy little corner at Novato RV park