'Snapshot' tour of California Delta, April 2010
This is Elderhostel/Road Scholar’s most popular tour, deservedly so. When you live in the Bay Area, wine-tasting is a day trip. You can drive for an hour, no matter where you’re starting from, and find wineries nearby. But when we say, “Wine Country”, most people are referring to Napa and Sonoma. They are the biggest, but also the most crowded – especially in summer.
This is no small matter to consider. Traffic can be awful in the Bay Area, and the roads up there are mostly narrow, 1-lane in each direction. Add in big Greyhound-sized tour buses arriving every hour, and it begins to look like Manhattan on a Friday evening, instead of a bucolic pastoral getaway. This trip would give us a very different view of Napa - by sailing up the Napa River to the city of Napa, at a leisurely 10 mph on the trawler Dolphin.
Our first day of sailing was perfect. It was a bright clear day, and there were still many birds (the biggest migration is in winter, and ends by April). It’s an amazing difference to be sailing down the river instead of whizzing past in a car. We saw flocks of mud sparrows flitting by, ospreys eating fish, and even a majestic pod of huge white pelicans taking off as the boat sails slowly onwards.
One sees so much more this way. The leisurely pace is relaxing, and makes you feel energized. Even though Carlos and I aren’t ‘birders’, we enjoyed being on the water and seeing the birds everywhere.
The guides told us how the old salt ponds are slowly being flushed and reclaimed as marsh restoration, to the great benefit and increase in wildlife. The Napa River, once threatened, is now vigorous and alive again.
There is an amazing variety of housing styles of homes built atop some of the levees. They range from simple summer cabins to multi-story McMansions, all side by side. You can only see them from the river - we had no idea all these homes were here. From the freeways, they're almost invisible.
We go under several bridges as we sail along. One drawbridge has to be opened for us. Two others are permanently open, however. That structure on top of this bridge was once used as the quarters for the bridgemaster. The bridge span was raised or lowered by massive concrete counterweights.
Because the bridge is no longer used, it's now left permanently raised.
When we sail under the tall, modern Napa River Bridge, we see the mud sparrows, which were collecting mud on the shores of the river, darting in and out of the underside of the bridge. They're depositing the mud to make their nests. There are dozens of them, silhouetted briefly against the concrete span.
When you're driving on the freeway, you have no idea all this wildlife is right below your wheels!
The second day brought us to the “Mothball Fleet”, which is slowly being dismantled although some 25 ships will permanently remain in the middle of San Pablo Bay. The weather turned windy with light but steady rain, so although we saw a bit of Suisun Marsh, the decision was made to stop after lunch and the boat returned to dock. It was way too wet to bring out my camera, so I didn't get any photos here.
Although we’ve sailed a little bit around the Bay and through the Golden Gate Bridge, this was the first time we’d done any sailing in the eastern section of the San Pablo Bay. Even in the mist, it is a beautiful, different way to see an area we were all familiar with but had only traveled to via busy freeways. At the end of the trip, everyone agreed we would have liked it to be 3 full days touring instead of just 2 full days. The boat was beautiful and comfortable, and our guides well-informed and funny.
Being so close to Napa, this was the perfect opportunity to just keep driving through the Wine Country. So that’s what we did, on our own for another 10 days. But that’s another chapter - click on the link at the top, for our CA Wine Country trip.
