Road tripping Northern California: Napa Valley & Point Reyes

Northern California is blessed with beautiful national parks, dramatic seashores and gorgeous vineyards. For visitors and residents alike, NorCal is the perfect place for a road trip because you can get from one point of interest to another in less than two hours. In a weekend, you can easily visit Napa Valley and Point Reyes, two of the most visited and perhaps most photographed places in Northern California.

Napa Valley

A road trip isn’t a road trip without a visit to wineries! You can certainly choose to drive to the various wineries yourself but it just isn’t fun when the designated driver isn’t drinking. Instead, park your car and join a local wine tour such as Platypus Wine Tours. You’ll visit smaller wineries, get a picnic lunch and meet like-minded people on the tour. It’s also fun to see the progression of strangers being awkward at first (when sober) to becoming best friends (when drunk) as the day goes on. Accommodations in Napa might be a little pricey so another option is to book a room in Santa Rosa instead. It’s definitely more affordable and you’ll cut 30 minutes off your driving time as you head towards Point Reyes.

Lunch was a beautiful affair with delicious sandwiches, pasta salad and these yummy mini cakes! There’s also wine, of course.

Point Reyes

Nature lovers will absolutely fall head over heels in love with the majestic Point Reyes. Home to more than 1,500 species of plants and animals, Point Reyes is an awesome place to photograph nature at its grandest. It also has a dramatic coastline, gorgeous beaches and an awesome lighthouse that was built in 1870.

There are  308 steps to the lighthouse but you wouldn’t even really notice it because you’d be so captured by the surroundings. It’s definitely worth the effort! If wind speeds exceed more than 40 m.p.h., they will close the steps for visitors’ safety. It was incredibly windy the day we visited but thankfully not enough to shut the place down.

Just a sample of the wide variety of beautiful foliage growing along the cliffs.

If you look closely, those are dozens (perhaps even more) of elephant seals  chilling out on the beach!

If you’re hungry for some fresh seafood, you can stop by the oyster farms along Tomales Bay. You can buy fresh oysters to enjoy right there and then, or rent a picnic table at the farm to shuck and barbecue your oysters. It doesn’t get any fresher than being at the source!