Vacation is Sweet in Sonoma County

Sonoma County, CA- otherwise known as “wine country” is the perfect vacation destination for a relaxing and scenic trip. For wine lovers, you’ll get your fix with the hundreds of wineries in Sonoma County and the neighboring Napa Valley- but wine county vacations are enjoyable even for people who aren’t wine aficionados! Enjoy the Sonoma coast, one of the most beautiful seascapes in the country, and take a variety of wine tasting tours in one of the many wineries during your Wine County vacations. Sonoma County vacation rentals are varied and located in close proximity to many of the area’s favorite tourist attractions.

Northern California is known worldwide for its wine production- however, staying in Sonoma County vacation rentals means you’ll experience so much more than vineyards and wineries. Nature is an abundant resource, with old growth redwoods that seem miles high, gardens and orchards and farm animals making their home in the land of wine county vacations. After you’ve toured all of the wineries you’ve ever wanted to see, and tasted as many wines as you can manage, take a San Francisco Bay Area Jeep Tour and see neighborhoods that bus tours are unable to show tourists; Pacific Heights, Lombard Street, Seacliff, Russian Hill and Coit Tower. You’ll see the famous Golden Gate Bridge- a must see while staying in Sonoma County.

A National Historic Landmark of California, the Sonoma Square, a central plaza located inside Sonoma State Historic Park, is the largest in the state of California. The Sonoma Square consists of a variety of historic buildings, including the first building constructed in 1823 by Father Jose Altimira during a plan to replace mission establishments in San Francisco and San Rafael. Any wine county vacation should include a visit to the Sonoma Square. If boating and water activities are your pleasure, the very large, man made Lake Sonoma should be on your itinerary.

While you stay in here, you’ll be happy to know you’ll have no problem finding that perfect gift for family and friends- and yourself! A wide variety of shopping opportunities from the high-end factory outlets offering discounted prices, to exclusive salons to bookstores full of hard-to-find items, art galleries, to one of a kind clothing stores. Enclosed shopping malls with brand name outlet stores make it possible to shop no matter what the weather is. As your enjoying your wine county vacation, travel some of Sonoma County’s back roads and small towns for the most quaint of shopping opportunities.

Not quite as well known as wine county vacations is the number of spas located near the majority of Sonoma County vacation rentals. The word “spa” actually means “healing through water”, and Sonoma County has many natural thermal springs- making it a natural location for some of the most beautiful and relaxing spas in the country. Sonoma county spas came up with the idea of healthy diets including more than vegetables and fruits with low calorie counts, and “spa cuisine” was born here. The idea of having a glass of wine with dinner was also born in Sonoma county spas. The spas combine traditional techniques with the “wine touch”. You can sit in a relaxing whirlpool and view gorgeous scenery while sipping a glass of champagne; cleanse with a grape seed facial; or sit in champagne bubble baths.

You can enjoy a round or two of golf during your stay in the Sonoma County vacation rentals. The PGA Charles Schwab Cup Championship is played in Sonoma County- and there are golf courses for all levels of players and even for players on a budget.

Wine county vacations offer more than wine tastings and tours. Your Sonoma County vacation rentals give you the perfect location to experience all that northern California has to offer.

In this 2nd video, it’s our 3rd full day at Windsor, CA for our summer vacation trip. Today, we were headed to Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve. It was in Guerneville, CA. It was only about 30 minutes from our resort. We hiked along the trails through the park and observed the beautiful redwoods in the grove. We also saw the largest/oldest redwood there, known as Colonel Armstrong. Then we saw the tallest one known as Parson Jones. It was a beautiful place to relax and simply enjoy the ancient forests of Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve.

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We are planning to go vacation but with gas prices I want to go some place close. We are think seattle but have want some suggestions from locals. What go place to go in seattle. Also does anyone know of good website for cheap airfares. We are considering driving up to seattle from northern california. If we do we might stay over night in portland. Any tips on portland. We would be take our own car instead of renting one. So we want to split half and half time so we don’t over heat the car and drive 12 hours straight. We are plan to go june 11 to june 17 so not many days avilable want to make use of the short vacation time.

We’re building a pen for 2 rabbits that will be about 100 square feet. Grass is not a good option. Are bark chips safe? If not, any suggestions on what to use as ground cover? All responses much appreciated.

Resort at Indio Attracts California Families

The Coachella Valley is a popular vacation spot for families. Palm Springs and nearby cities are the perfect antidote to congested big-city living.

The cities of this valley have made good use of irrigation water piped in to transform the harsh desert environment into a cornucopia of luxury resorts, golf courses ‘ some 120 at last count ‘ upscale shopping boulevards and palm trees as far as the eye can see. The fertile green lawns are carefully overseen by an army of landscapers and a drive through the neighborhoods of places like Palm Desert and Indian Wells is a window into the “good life” enjoyed by well-to-do retirees as well as upwardly mobile professionals.

Yet never far away from these meticulously maintained homes and estates is the raw desert ‘ a place where you can finally put space between yourself and other people, and enjoy what passes for a back-to-nature experience, even though minutes later you’ll most likely be luxuriating in modern, upscale accommodations designed to pamper you from head to toe.

On our most recent trip to the desert we based ourselves a few miles east of Palm Springs in Indio, a comfortable neighborhood, but perhaps less extravagant than some other parts of the valley. Out on the eastern edge of the Coechella Valley cities, this area is now undergoing a major transformation with several new housing developments that feature modern, spacious homes set alongside man-made lagoons and canals, all five minutes from the freeway. It is in this same area that a major new resort complex ‘ the Resort at Indio ‘ was built just in the last few years.

There are 453 condo units altogether and they’re built around a waterpark full of sprinklers, canals, ponds, pools and even a man-made river for inner-tube floating. The largest of two swimming pools is a gigantic 5,000 square feet. If you’re anxious to get some exercise, check out the backetball court, tennis courts, gym and recreation center. Golfers need go no farther than the Terra Lago golf course adjacent to the resort.

Given the recreational opportunities, it’s not surprising that the Resort at Indio is especially popular with families. During our visit on an unseasonably warm spring weekend, family groups large and small were taking full advantage of the pools and other facilities. Families were spending hours on the spacious deck poolside. Come mealtime, many would walk the short distance back to their condo units and fire up the barbecues available on their decks and patios. As you might expect, the accommodations are really vacation rentals, not hotel rooms ‘ each unit comes with a complete kitchen, multiple bedrooms, living and dining room areas. Since the resort is almost brand-new, everything’s in top shape with the latest appliances, colors and d?r.

As tempting as it was to just laze by the pool all weekend, we did want to get out and experience the desert. With daytime temperatures reaching mid-90’s, we headed out early in the morning when temps were more in the mid-70’s to mid-80’s. Our objective was the Pinkham Canyon Trail, within the Joshua Tree National Park, only a 20-minute drive from the resort. Our desert activity: geocaching.

For those who are not yet enlightened, geocaching is a relatively new activity in which you use your hand-held GPS unit to find “caches” or boxes of trinkets hidden in various locations. There can be caches in remote areas, or in developed areas, or even in amusement parks such as Legoland near San Diego. What it really comes down to is a kind of Easter Egg hunt for both kids and adults and, from what we’ve discovered, it is great family activity.

If you have a Garmin GPS, it has nifty software that interfaces with a major website – www.geocaching.com ‘ to make finding these caches relatively easy. Prior to heading out to the Pinkham Canyon Trail, we went to the website and found a dozen or so caches that were located in that particular area. The Garmin software enabled us to download the longitude and latitude of those caches into our GPS so that we could see where they were on our GPS map. Once we got in the general area of the caches, we just let our GPS lead us right to the locations of the caches.

Some caches are easy to find in easy terrain; others can be quite challenging and located in terrain that is hard to traverse. It was going to be a hot day, so we chose the easiest option – driving the 4-wheel-drive trail and finding caches along the way. We eventually found about two-thirds of them and, of course, our grade-school-aged kids were thrilled with each find ‘ even though nothing of real value was to be found. The idea is to take a trinket and leave a trinket of your own; it’s “treasure” only in the sense that you’ll treasure this activity with your kids. And it gave us the illusion, anyway, we had gone “into the wild.”

Another 15 miles east from the Pinkham Canyon Trial on Interstate 10 there is a great place to see some military history first-hand: the General Patton Memorial Museum at Chiriaco Summit. The museum is a testament to General George Patton, one of the military heroes of World War II, and also to his specific involvement with creating the Desert Training Center, a vast desert landscape set aside for tank training when U.S. troops needed to prepare for warfare in North Africa. While Patton only ran the center for four months when it opened in 1942, he was instrumental in choosing the site where it was located.

The museum tells the story of the training center, but it also is a collection of artifacts from several wars including World War II. It’s not in a fancy building and doesn’t compare, for example, with the World War II Museum in New Orleans, but it is a fascinating group of exhibits that brings visitors closer to the realities of war. Through its collection of photos and documents, the museum offers a historical account of Patton and his contributions to the U.S. military. There is a large assortment of items actually used in war, from German Lugar pistols to machine guns to gas masks to uniforms and gear worn by our troops in several past wars.

It’s as if someone put up a sign that said “Bring us all of your war memorabilia and leave it here.”

Outside the museum are several tanks and other Army vehicles that help visitors envision what tank warfare must have been like in World War II. And it was easy to imagine hundreds of these tanks doing mock battle in these miles and miles of open desert a little more than a half-hour away from today’s glitzy Palm Springs.

AT A GLANCE

WHERE: Indio is located in the Coachella Valley, about 20 miles east of Palm Springs. The Resort at Indio is next to the desert foothills at the northern edge of the valley and adjacent to Terra Lago golf course.

WHAT: The Resort at Indio is a condo-style resort in which visitors can reserve condos much as they would reserve a hotel room. During our visit there were no restaurants on property, but a deli and an on-site Domino’s Pizza were scheduled to open in late spring 2008.

WHEN: Prime time of the year is late fall, winter and early spring because daytime temperatures are moderate during those periods. However, we’ve enjoyed Palm Springs even in hot temperatures by planning early morning outings and spending a lot of time in the swimming pool. Rates are substantially lower in summer.

WHY: The desert is a great place to escape civilization and it’s where you can always count on sunshine.

HOW: For more information on the Resort at Indio, phone 800-867-2095 or visit www.greatpricedcondos.com/id/. Rates range from in low-season for a one-bedroom unit to 0 in high season for a three-bedroom unit. Patton Museum info can be obtained by phoning 760-227-3483 or visit www.generalpattonmuseum.com.

I’m just curious if anyone has gone to or has knowledge of the Education program at Humboldt (in CA) Thanks!

It is between Motel268, Hotel Novotel Peace, North Garden Hotel and Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. The Motel 268 is much cheaper but is just as convenient to the Wangfujing Shopping Street. I am wondering if the other 3 hotels are any different than Motel268 and worth the CNY488. Any help would be great, thanks!

Ok I dated my high school sweet heart for five years till about a month ago. AWe would alwasy have problems fights and what not but always get back ,,,,,well about a month and a half ago we took a trip to mazatlan mexico to visit her family acompanied by her parents and family members. We had a blast there she showed extreme love and care for me throught out the vacation but as soon as we got back we began to fight again i was here for about a week when she broke up with me and said everything was over over a stupid fight that I was jealous. It was regarding not trusting her she even changed her number just a week after returning from Mexico. I got advice to give her time so I went to visit family members up in northern california for two weeks I tried calling her but the calls would never reach her noone in her family would give her the phone. I was due to come back on a tuesday and the sunday before that tuesday i got a call from my sister telling me she had left with another guy….she ran away from home didnt tell her parents anything (and this is a very conservative family that expects the daughters to leave the house married) and takes off to live with her x before me a x that was with her before I dated her. I know something was not right in the relationship in the last couple months but she covered it up so well in the vacation. As A matter of fact we had our wedding date set for nov 7 of 09 we had a house of my dad that was going to be rented out and we were also picking colors of the house and furniture that week we broke up. My question is can some one act like this with a person and have other plans…? She was more into getting everything ready for the house than I was and all of a sudden she leaves with someone else. Can anyone please give me there opinion of what do you think happend and also what can I do to move one and not think of her all day long its been 1 month since she left her house my sister goes to medical school for nursing with her but I have never seen her since I left up north. I dont know if this matters but her new man is short stubby and is a heavy drinker smoker of marijuana and cocaine user has no job and lives off his parents drug dealing money has no future and is pretty much a low life according to all her friends. What Do you guys think of this problem how can I resolve it and how can I forget her. Another thing her closedt cousin is a good friend of mine and we still ahng out Is That bad thing according to my sister they always text each other in school ( her and my good friend her cousin) and apparently talk about alot of things dont know if hes giving her info or not. Is it that easy to forget someone like she did ? I am so Confused !!!!!!!!!!