Category — Tours

California’s growth rhythm is always a mystery to newcomers from four season climates. In Sonoma County we already see the first stirring of new life even as the leaves linger on the trees and Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas bear down on us. These early rains have triggered the grasses and beneath our still golden hills the new season is being born.

I was at spectacular Applewood Inn a few days ago, talking with innkeeper Jimmy Caron as the gentle rain was falling in the courtyard. A passing guest heard us admiring the summer-ending rain and reminded us that tourists aren’t quite as happy with early season rainfall as the locals. His party had pored over weather predictions for months, hoping for a beautiful and dry tour of the wine country at the end of the harvest. I was disappointed for him since I love showing off the beauty of the county to our valued visitors. On the other hand, he’s going to get the clean skies, fresh earthy smells, and sparkling crispness that isn’t possible without a cleansing rain.

I passed a Japanese maple after the rain. Many still-green leaves, already loosening for their personal fall, had taken a beating from a brief burst of pelting rain. They joined their yellowing comrades on the ground around a brass watering frog. For me, these first rains and emerging grass shoots mark the start of the new year even before the old year is ushered out the door.

It was beautiful driving weather today, so I thought I’d check out some fixers along Bodega Highway. Northwood Golf Club is a beautiful spot for a little recreation, but I didn’t have time for nine holes, let alone eighteen, so I just stopped to admire the redwood shaded grass for a minute and headed west. I took a quick detour into Monte Rio since I remembered a pretty gate at the Village Inn that would help flesh out my gate postings.

Just as I rememberd, this iron gate was roofed in foliage that was echoed at an interior courtyard gate. This inn is nestled in the redwoods along the banks of the Russian River so it doesn’t really need the addition of a green oasis like an urban location might, but we believe in plenty of nature in west Sonoma County.

If a couple of measly redwoods don’t give you enough plant material in your life, you can stick some plants on your fence and gates…and add some planters for good measure. Actually, all kidding aside, the “doorness” created by the ivy in the gate is an important element to add human scale to the environment, particularly in a redwood forest that reaches so high into the sky. The gate in the first photo is just visible on the lower left of this image and you can get a sense for the sheer size of the redwoods, both height and girth. The Village Inn has done a good job at building a comfortable and cozy environment within the redwoods.

I headed up to Occidental where I needed to get pictures of some of the Italian style family restaurants for an article Wild Jane is writing on the main sonoma.net site. I made sure to get photos of both the Union Hotel and the classic Howard’s Cafe two blocks up the street. The Union Hotel is a whole complex of buildings including a pizzeria, saloon, ballroom, and a residence at the end of the street. I had mentioned a few posts back how gates can be used as inviting features within a longer property divider. This mixed residental and commercial fence is a useful reminder that in a town with busy restaurants and saloons, the good citizens living next door probably want some peace and quiet.

There isn’t a residential break apart from the driveway in this long fence. It’s a fairly elegant “stay out” sign. There is, of course, a pretty gate into the restaurant’s courtyard and a driveway gate for the residence.

Howard’s Cafe is a beautifully converted residence with great original detailing on the lower and upper covered porches and eaves. It’s a lovely spot and one of my favorite breakfast hangouts on Sunday when I can get away. If you get a chance to stop by, have a look at the detailing on the upper porch beam where they echo the post-top detailing in the middle of the span. It’s a nice touch that you absolutely won’t see in production building today. Of course, you’re not there just to look at the architecture. The food really is great.

The builders also created a very intricate detail at the eaves that’s a little busy for my taste, but it’s certainly a great example of what pattern books, the power saw and an abundance of wood made possible. Sort of like desktop publishing in 1986…too many fonts, colors, and styles, but hey, see what I can do.

The Potter Schoolhouse in Bodega is one of the few remaining buildings from Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of “The Birds”. It’s been a schoolhouse, bed and breakfast, and private residence. I’m a fan of the simple symmetry of the building with the round-top windows, corner columns, and octagonal tower. It’s a timeless building without the gingerbread of a Queen Anne or the stripped down plainness of the Craftsman style. There are a couple of other buildings in Bodega that I really like.

This simple residence features dramatic yellow painted quoins which are elements that were traditionally used to imitate how stone walls meet at corners. These wooden quoins are common in buildings of the late 1800’s and appear in everything from a Italianate to a Queen Anne to this plainer example. One of my favorite fixers on North St in Healdsburg shares this detail.

The final gem on my trip was this attractive two story, two porch farmhouse behind a white picket fence. The eaves, porches, and windows all have nice detailing that is highlighted by the simple horizonal siding. The relatively steep, hipped roof and arched windows make this a good example of an Italianate style building. Just outside the picket fence is this old weathered sign which probably proclaimed this as an inn or commercial establishment. Now it’s a great example of the forces of nature on human construction.

I’ve bemoaned the loss of stone and brick as building materials due to earthquakes. We end up with a lot of faux walls where a thin stone veneer is glued to concrete block or even wood framing. This Freestone property has always had one of the most beautiful wooden fences in Sonoma County. They are in the process of adding a stone entrance to the property and we can see the solution for an earthquake resistant stone wall.

If you look carefully at the large image you get from clicking on the thumbnail, you’ll see that the stone being used here is real, and almost half a foot thick. You’ll see the reinforcing steel emerging from the earthquake resistant reinforced concrete block wall that becomes the bond that ties the rock and concrete block together. It’s not cheap to build this way, but it’s the only way to get an authentic stone wall that will pass building codes and remain standing when the next big one rumbles by. I tip my hat to the V bar C folks for doing it right, and for keeping that beautiful fence intact.

One other facet of the changing face of Sonoma County emerged when I was taking a picture of the wooden fence. If you look carefully at the upper right corner of the image (click to enlarge), just past the stump-sliced V bar C sign, you’ll see some of the most westerly grapevines in Sonoma County marching down the hillside. Ten years ago this would have been considered outside the range of grape growing climate. Now it’s home to the lovely Pinot Noir.

Twin Valley, home of the Macmurray Ranch used to have the most wonderful trimmed redwoods. The underside of the trees along the fence line of their western pasture used to be groomed as crisply as a golf course green…just upside down. It was the cows, of course, reaching as high as they could to nibble on the emerging green redwood needles. I’m embarassed to say it, but it took me longer than it should have to see the cause and effect relationship. As I was driving through Freestone today I noticed this willow tree with an equally crisp bottom trim job. Alert observers will see not just the standing cow, but her partner in inverted mowing laying down on the job.

Freestone is a charming hamlet. Osmosis Spa, an inn, a great bakery, a rhododendron nursery across the road, and a classic general store are a few of the businesses here where the road to Occidental intercepts the Bodega Highway. There’s also the world’s most over-built foundation. I’m not sure how this came to be, but I’ve never seen a water tank with such a forest of massive timbers holding it up. It would make an interesting challenge at Berkeley’s school of engineering to see if they could figure out just how much this foundation could hold.

My first significant earthquake came while I was sitting on an under-construction deck in Berkeley. The deck, still unbraced, stood still while the house it was attached to swayed pretty vigorously. It was an interesting demonstration of Newton’s Law that a body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. That same earthquake that couldn’t twitch my deck was strong enough to move parts of California a few inches North and knock down stone walls.

Structural engineers have studied earthquakes and their effect on structures and can make just about any building designed today both safe and durable in an earthquake. Sadly, some of our most beautiful building materials are terrible choices for earthquake country. I did a quick walking tour around Railroad Square in Santa Rosa today and was admiring the many older buildings that featured stone and brick. The Hotel La Rose is a beautiful stone building of three stories that was built of locally quarried basalt in 1907, a year after the big quake in San Francisco that also knocked down much of Santa Rosa. Just around the corner from the hotel is the Jacobs building. Lots of tenants have occupied this building and Capri, one of our favorite Italian restaurants, was on the ground floor. We still miss Luigi.

The clinker brick facade of this Railroad Square landmark has a wonderfully authentic color and rustic feel and that isn’t achievable with stucco, wood, or any of the faux masonry products that get glued onto the exteriors of buildings today. So the answer to the question, “Why do earthquakes suck” has to be that they deny us some of the traditional architectural materials that have been around for millenia. It’s still possible to design with brick appearance as the JC parking lot attests, but that’s a public works job with a mega budget. For the average residential and commercial builder, real stone and real brick are expensive ornamentation devoid of any structural significance. Thanks a lot, earthquakes…

We don’t have a lot of old bridges left, at least steel truss bridges that remind me of the Erector Sets I grew up with. There’s one in Guerneville, but so many RV’s got dinged up trying to pass each other that they’ve made it into a pedestrian bridge and created a functional, but un-dramatic concrete replacement. This bridge, the Wohler Bridge, not only represents the engineering past for all of us, but it crosses the Russian River between Healdsburg and Forestville at a particularly beautiful stretch.<More>