Sonoma County Harvest Festival

Saturday:  October 06, 2012 

We spent the morning setting up stuff to do next week in San Francisco.  The city of San Francisco is probably not one we will be back to any time soon so we decided to really do some heavy duty sight-seeing.  We are moving tomorrow to an RV Park where we can walk to the San Francisco ferry that will take us to the Fisherman’s Wharf area where we can get tours and such.  We are going to take a city tour with the option to visit Alcatraz Island and the famous prison on Monday. Tuesday we have to ourselves to explore.  Then on Wednesday, we are doing an evening/night dinner/dance cruise in the bay.  We think that should pretty much do us for SF.

This afternoon we finally got to the Sonoma County Harvest Festival.  It’s a very nice fair with lots of stuff for kids as well as adults to do.  We got a package for $40 each that gives you admission, 6 taste tickets, a wine glass, and a $10 coupon for purchasing wine.  The wine tasting area boasts over 150 wines and I believe it.  The place was mobbed! At first it seemed we would never get our tickets used as it was difficult to get close to the wine tables.  But, after getting into the rhythm, it wasn't too hard to get some wine J

Patty and I like white wine and specifically the dryer Rieslings and Gewürztraminers varieties.  There were not many of these to pick from.  There were a lot of Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs to taste though.  We managed to stumble through ;)

The line to have your age checked and get a wrist band.   "Where do you think this guy had his finger?"

Inside the tasting area.

Inside the tasting area.

Inside the tasting area.

Lama for petting.

They were doing rides before this picture.

Grape stomp competition   Note the people in front holding the glass bottles.  There is a time limit and the one with the most juice in the bottle wins.

This guy seems to be working it hard!

The judges weigh the competitors bottles to see who won.  Note the one on the bottom almost full.  I think they must have won.

Just a picture as we are leaving the fairgrounds.  I like palm trees.

After the tasting, we headed for some fair food.  It seems garlic fries are the thing here as there were several vendors selling them.  So I had to have some to see what all the fuss is about.  I got mine from a vendor who also had a restaurant just up the street from our RV park, Johnny Garlic's.  Patty got her usual, a funnel cake.  A different cultural thing here in the west for funnel cakes, they offer different toppings like pudding and fruits.  We saw the same thing in Salt Lake City.  They also offer the traditional, for us, powered sugar which Patty got.  The garlic fries were the shoe string type and were extremely garlicky   I mean so much garlic and what seemed to be liquid garlic that my mouth was completely coated.  They were good, not so sure they would go over well in the East.  I would eat them again but maybe need to wait a week or so.

Garlic fries

We walked the fair some and then went to purchase some wine.  The wine we liked at the tasting didn’t make the “Gold List” so they were not selling it!!  So we purchased a bottle each of Riesling and a Gewürztraminer from different wineries.  The lines at the check-out were very long.  None of the wines or food items had prices, so the cashiers had to look each item up manually and then do the discounts also by hand.  It took us about 45 minutes just to check out.  We had fun kibitzing with people in the lines though.  It’s all just so good!

We walked back to the RV around 5 pm and did some internet surfing and then made some dinner.

It was a good day in deed!

Tomorrow we move a very short distance of 50 miles to Greenbrae, CA on the SF Bay.  Should be only an hour trip.

Stay tuned!