Grapes of Wrath!

We left Sacramento today on a blue-sky morning headed for Santa Rosa, close to Napa and Sonoma, at the heart of California's wine country. The relatively short drive took us by countless vineyards, reminiscent of Italy and John Steinbeck's stories of 'The Valley'. At midday, we turned off the 101 and immediately saw the sign for Sebastapol which we decided was worth exploring. Inevitably, on arrival we were drawn to Starbucks, but only after first drawing a blank at an peculiar place just inside the City Limits. What we mistook for a hole-in-the-wall coffee outlet was in fact a huge retro-clothes shop ...... the size of an aircraft hanger! The two girls running-it were very helpful, but we made a quick escape! The Starbucks shop was located in a small mall nearby and post-coffee we took a look around, stumbling on an interesting businesses producing specialist, bacteria -free, ionic, soft drinks.

  

We got chatting to its owner who showed us some neat micro-brewing kit and gave us samples of a range of products ranging from root beer to chai ...... Good Luck (We would have preferred to have some 'fizz' in the drinks!) With time on our hands we made our way to our hotel and checked-in early, enabling us to do a laundry run in the nearby 'coin-op'. A couple of the clientèle looked and behaved suspiciously like extras from 'Deliverance', but hey, its California ..... welcome to Earth! A fairly chilled day overall and as befits such, I pick the following 60's track by Stone Pony (Written by Mike Nesmith and sung by Linda Ronstadt)