We’re back from our trip to Mendocino, and as it happens, the weather was cold and rainy. We were forced to take shelter in a winery, where one can stay until the Pinot’s gone weather clears.
The scenery in Mendocino is spectacular. We hiked around Mendocino Headlands State Park and visited two wineries. As you may know, Dale and I live in great wine country, but the Anderson Valley specializes in wines that are not typically grown near us. That’s how we ended up with two cases of wine – a mix of Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir.
The obligatory difference of opinion between us lovebirds came down to whether we should leave the wine in the car overnight. I’m thinking several hundred dollars in wine – take it up to the room in case someone decides to smash and grab.
Dale’s thinking that’s way too much work. Take a chance.
Granted, our room was in an old house with narrow steps. And we are not as young and hearty as we once were. Dale finally agreed and carried our first case up. He was almost to the top, when he stumbled, but he righted the ship pretty well, saved the wine and only got a scrape on his knee.
He was annoyed because he saw no reason why the wine couldn’t have stayed in the car. But my little brain was working overtime, and I said, hey, I have an idea! My suitcase was a sturdy tote with a thick shoulder strap. What if I emptied it out, we put some of the bottles in the bag and shuttled the wine up in shifts?
And that is what we did. Kind of pathetic, but even Dale said it worked out pretty well. Of course, we had to shuttle it back to the car this morning, but downhill was way easier.
We were mostly disappointed in the food. But then we almost always are. Back in our globe-trotting days, we ate some pretty amazing meals. And these days, we are good cooks with impossibly high standards. We ate at a pub one night – our first dinner out since the pandemic! Mediocre fish and chips. So sad when you know how good it can be.
The second night we ate at a fancy place. We both got duck for an entrée, and it was cooked to perfection, but they used five spice seasoning, and I think it overpowered the duck. It just didn’t taste ducky enough for us. They served it with sautéed Swiss chard, which I love, but I didn’t think it was a good pairing.
All in all, we had a fine time, and we’re glad we went, but there’s some room for improvement. For many retirees, travel is their main mission, and they’re good at it. If that’s you, please feel free to skip this next part. But if you’re like us, homebodies with only a moderate itch to travel, you might benefit from what I’m calling a vacation calibration.
When we were younger, we were avid scuba divers. Most of our vacations were at Caribbean beach resorts. We don’t dive anymore, so the beach is less alluring. Yet we keep heading there, partly because that’s what we’ve always done. We do love the ocean vistas and great seafood, but this trip poked a hole in the seafood-is-better-at-the-beach theory.
I also used to be happy just hanging around the pool reading, because it was the opposite of work. Now I can stay home, hang around the pool and read whenever I want. I certainly don’t want to waste time and money to veg in the sun.
Food is a big attraction, but there’s the disappointment factor. I thought, what if we were just so damned hungry, that perfect food wasn’t the objective? What if all we need is something like a burger and a beer, which you can get about anywhere. And that led me to the idea that hiking might be a better focus for our trips. Work out hard, get cleaned up, eat, drink, crawl back to clean dry room and repeat?
That’s pretty much what we did when we were diving, but maybe at this stage of our lives we’re mountain people.
Dale reminded me that we loved Santa Fe, N.M. Plenty of hiking, interesting historical artifacts, great museums and delicious food. All the restaurants within an easy walk of the hotel. There must be more places like that!
So that’s my mission, should I choose to accept it. Continue with the vacation calibration and find a better fit for our changing expectations. While this trip wasn’t perfect, look at the pictures! I mean, how bad could it be?
Same thing happened to us. Just got back from 5 days in Portland. It rained almost every day and snowed 2 days, but we just kept on walking/hiking. We’re calibrating. Let me know when you get here in Santa Fe and we’ll buy drinks.
Yum. Drinks in Santa Fe. Will factor that into the calibration!
Your vacation pictures look wonderful!
I think it’s a great idea to recalibrate what an ideal vacation will mean to you.
I love the idea of centering vacations around activities or cultural experiences, rather than “R and R”…if you’re not getting enough R and R when you’re at home, you’re doing retirement wrong…LOL!
Sometimes pubs and burger joints get it right, when so many highly ranked places get it wrong. On our honeymoon my late husband and I had a meal booked at the fancy inn we were staying at that was so disappointing we thought we must be being pranked, and surely the waiter would soon come out with the real dinner. (Molecular gastronomy, doncha know…) The next night we dined instead at a pub down the street and were amazed at the quality of the food.
I’d much rather take a chance (and sometimes be blown away) at a modest restaurant than be disappointed by a “chef” interpreting the latest foodie trend.
Deb
Well said! We don’t need the R&R anymore. If there’s one thing we get right, it’s retirement. I totally agree it’s better to be disappointed by a modest restaurant than to drop a bunch of money on some foodie trend.
I agree with so much of this (including your wanting to unload the wine from your car at night 🙂 ). Although I can’t say we are gourmet cooks, we often prefer our cooking over what we get (and pay big bucks for) in restaurants. We’d much prefer to be active during the day and then get a simple meal in the evening. Another suggestion for a little get-away is the Central Coast. We love Paso Robles, Morro Bay, and the Santa Inez Valley. Yes, they have wine, but there is also some great hiking and biking.
Thanks for the ideas — I’m definitely adding those locations to the spreadsheet!
Beautiful photos. Our vacation stories are similar to yours..scuba divers, Caribbean and Central America trips for the sea and seafood.Bad meals the last 10 years..we do love our own home cooking …. We don’t eat out hardly ever anymore.l only a few local Mexican joints.
The last couple of years before Covid we started enjoying different kinds of trips IMMENSELY: One in particular was our drive trip in Oregon. We flew to Medford..cheap on Allegiant air from here. Rented a car and drove a gorgeous route up to Crater Lake.Stayed at an airbn a night.Back on the waterfall trail and across to Bandon and some other small beach towns.. stayed 2 nights in 2 different airbnbs.Met interesting people!! Had decent seafood and MANY MANY waterfalls and so much WOODS,REDWOODS< and nature! Drove back down to Medford and home via Allegiant.Such an easy and relaxing and enjoyable trip.Ditto Santa Fe..rent a car and take the high road up to Taos for a few days!!!!! I took cooking classes at the good cooking school in Santa Fe too.. fun!!
We enjoy small mining towns here in Arizona and made a twice a year trip to Bisbee, to Winslow, and a few other places.. stay in historic hotels..
I foresee that kind of travel in the future, since we’ve lost our big travel bug,which wasn’t that buggy to begin with!
We DO have TWO East coast weddings in the summer /fall since all the young urns had to postpone their weddings due to Covid..that will be a long haul for us but wow I can’t wait to see family. ANd while there will spend a week visiting friend in New York City and the Jersey shore.
Times sure have changed.. and travel is definitely a story still in the making these days.. not gonna be like the “old times..” And definitely no more cruises!!
Your kind of travel sounds pretty great to me. There’s so much to see and do within driving distance. Neither one of us wants to get on an airplane. We do owe his sisters in Maine a visit, but I don’t know. I did have to laugh about bad meals the last 10 years. We’ve had one good one out in the past five!
We frequently lament that all the good restaurants have disappeared but then we started out eating in those white linen tablecloth places that simply don’t exist anymore. As for travel, we find it hard to get excited when there’s nothing to ‘escape’ from, ah, first world discontent.
I think you’ve nailed it. We have a great life — nothing to escape from. But sometimes a change of scenery is good, so we’ll continue to try some short road trips. As for restaurants, I agree completely. I was thinking of a parody of the Dr. Seuss book, “Oh, the places we used to go!”
I enjoy sitting on the beach and wouldn’t mind a coastal drive. I’ve also had really good luck at the true gourmet restaurants we’ve hit. But I was th8nking about a week long driving trip and realized it may not be calling to me. Go except for side trips when seeing my son,I’m mainly looking at no more than two overnights these days. Although a train trip is still on the short list.other people keep giving my ideas as to what I could write about and my list is growing, but……
Yes, the other thing to worry about are the body issues associated with long drives. My sciatica has mostly moved to my legs, but riding in the car for hours definitely aggravated it. We’re mostly two nights kind of people as well.
Beautiful landscape!
For me the best travel is lying in my own bed again at night ;-).
We traveled a lot while being younger and having enough cashflow. Nowadays it’s a daytrip to one of our beautiful lakes. But even there, where they are fishing for trout and char, you get awful convenience food. But little shops sell daily fresh smoked fish, which is delicious with a bit of horseradish and fresh bread.
If I could choose a trip, it would be the East Coast of the US. Just saw “The Sinner” Season 4, which is filmed in Maine, so beautiful.
We once have been to Martha’s Vineyard. Very nice and great food too. Fresh lobster!
We talked a lot on our trip about how much we miss Germany! The food was better, for sure. Dale is from Maine and still has two sisters there. We used to go every couple of years, but the pandemic fixed that. We do love it there in the summer. The food is fabulous. Our brother-in-law is a lobster fisherman, so we always have a great feast. And fried whole belly clams! Steamers!
Oh man, a topic near and dear to my heart. But first a side note that we spent 7 days RVing in Fort Bragg last summer as part of our 10 week Pacific NW adventure, day tripping to beautiful Mendocino while there. We had a great day in Mendocino, with coffee and muffins at Cafe Boujolais, and lunch and goodies at Good Life Cafe, both being highlights.
Your story about wine tussling did make me laugh. We always vow to not buy wine early on on our long RV trips, because storing it away from the elements is such a bugger. We always fail at this, lol, however, and then live with the misery of constantly moving the wine around to kerp it safe from weather and humans. BTW- did you make it to Pacific Star Winery in Mendocino county? We were not impressed by their wines, but those views- OMG!
Travel for us remains focused on large doses of physical activity, followed by good coffee, good ABV (ha!), and good food. If we are in a city, we’ll walk everywhere to get our physical activity in. So far, over about 40 years, this approach has remained the same even as the specific physical activities have shifted.
This year’s RV trip will begin in Capitola, and then slowly meander south with stays in Carmel, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, and Ojai. The trails they are a calling, as is the wine, craft beer, and good eats. 😊
We checked out Fort Bragg and thought it looked promising. We like the beer! Mendocino itself didn’t have much to offer overall, other than incredible beauty! I think Bar Harbor in Maine is better at being what Mendocino could be, if that makes sense. Our fancy dinner was at Cafe Beaujolais. What I didn’t say is that we had foie gras for an appetizer, and it was out of this world. I just didn’t want the grief for eating foie gras, but I’m stronger now. I can take it.
We did not make it to Pacific Star. Our choices were Navarro and Handley, both in Philo and both excellent.
I like the sound of your next trip. Carmel I could live without, but the other stops appeal to me. While you’re in Capitola, I recommend a side trip to Soquel Vineyards.
Absolutely time for vacation re-calibration. I was recently due to spend a week with a girlfriend in Wales on a solo trip (plus her dog), with books & walks on the nearby sandy beach. I said yes, until it transpired there were to be multiple social visits & outings with her friend, her friend’s husbands and their three dogs. Suddenly my gentle reading & beach walking week faded away. I decided to give my excuses and not go and spent the week at home instead, not working. Not working was just the break I needed. Doing all the other stuff I didn’t want to do wouldn’t have been. Especially as it turned out they only went to the beach once – I’d have been completely gutted if I’d been there.
Geez, it’s hard enough for me and my husband to agree on a vacation. Adding others to the mix is a bridge too far. I would have done exactly what you did!
I’m “vacationing” locally in a few months with friends from England. There’s something about seeing the local sites through another’s eyes. I know that I gained appreciation for my home countryside with their last visit 20 yrs ago. I will put on my holiday frame of mind and be a tour guide and tourist at the same time.
That sounds fabulous!!!