From the beginning of our planning for this trip, we decided that we would fly home the first week of May to be present for the eighth birthday of our granddaughter. She lights up our lives and we love her dearly, so we didn't want to miss it. The break provided a natural transition from the desert and dry weather days of Part Two to our foray into the Sierra Nevada's, Cascades and the Pacific Northwest. We left the car at the San Francisco airport, flew to Dulles airport, st

We discovered we had a taste for good wine decades ago and have been chasing it ever since. It's led us to California many times, as well as Oregon, Washington, and many wineries on the East Coast in Virginia, Maryland and elsewhere. We took a river cruise in the Bordeaux region of France some years ago and went to a couple of wineries in Tuscany in 2024. So it was a natural fit to drive through the Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez region of southern California on this trip. They've