Emily and I planned to visit northern California’s wine country and then camp on our way up to Portland. We did stop in Sonoma and Napa but the weather was bad so we skipped camping.

The traffic to get out of San Francisco was nothing short of  hectic. The drive, once out of the morning commuter traffic, was quite short. We stopped in Sonoma and visited one of my favorite shops on the square. We then headed to Artesa Winery for wine tasting. The visitor’s center is built into the hillside and it’s really understated compared to other wineries I’ve visited. We enjoyed our visit and then hit the road. The scenery in northern California was beautiful. Even though we had just been in the car for 10 hours from LA to SF (that’s what happens when there are 3 accidents and traffic jams), we were happy to spend a long day together in the car just catching up. We rolled into Portland exhausted, but since we hadn’t plan to arrive until the following day, it meant Emily had the next day off of work for us to just hang out like old times. :)

It was a beautiful drive despite the horrible rain we drove through. And ironically, a friend brought wine to a dinner party the other week and it was Artesa’s Pinot Noir. I’m not sure why, but it’s always nice to be like, ‘Hey, I’ve been there!’