In Praise of Cheese Vacations

We enjoyed a nice vacation in wine country this past week. With Talia in tow, wine tasting was highly impractical and hardly desirable. Being dairy fiends, we decided to call our trip a "cheese vacation." While it may not have been as spectacular as Wallace and Gromit's vacation, our cheese sources proved more reliable. Here is a what we did.

Home base was Windsor (located about 10 minutes from Healdsburg. Here we are in our condo.



Talia enjoyed exploring new territory, leaving her mark wherever she rolled.



She also had a new first, a shower! Talia's look of awe was quickly drowned out by her smiles.



Daddy gave Talia lots of piggyback rides.



We enjoyed walking around old town Windsor.





Our favorite stop was Powell's. It is a fun candy store with delicious gelato. Mmmmm! Poor Talia missed out on all the flavors, but the colors and shapes proved to be quite a treat.



We travelled to the Calistoga area for part of a day. The draws included a geyser, a petrified forest, and a functioning water wheel mill. Here are a few pictures of Calistoga's Old Faithful and the surrounding areas:







While we were there we saw fainting goats, four horned sheep, and llamas. One of the goats licked Talia. We captured some of these moments on video.

The petrified forest was interesting, although I think we got more bang for our buck at the geyser.







Here is the Bale Grist Mill. Unfortunately the mill was closed the day we visited, but we enjoyed snooping around for free.









We went on a walking tour of Healdsburg that included goodies from local shops and a bit of town history. The tour included wine tasting, chocolates, doughnuts, coffee, sourdough bread made from a 100 year old mother (aka starter), pastries, chips and salsa, gelato (I tried ginger flavored), olive oil tasting, and more. We also tried Talia cheese. Let me clarify, we tasted cheese made from sheep milk. We didn't take any pictures, but you can see a picture of our group at http://www.healdsburgwalkingtours.com/healdsburggourmetsampler.html.

Our last day included a trip to Sonoma. We did some cheese tasting and purchased some curds. They were gone in less than 24 hours.







We had a wonderful trip! The scenery was exquisite, the tastes were fabulous, and the traveling companions were priceless. We are off to the coast now!