Road Trip to Paso Robles
Paso Robles, CA - Sun, 10 Nov 2019, 11:30am
This morning I set off on a road trip to Paso Robles. The drive was fairly simple: basically a straight shot on US-101 for 165 miles from Sunnyvale to, well, Paso Robles. By leaving home around 8:45am on a Sunday I was able to complete the trip with only minor slowdowns due to construction work near Paso Robles. For nearly the entire 165 mile trip my speed never dipped below 60mph.
I've written recently about the hazy weather in the Bay Area. See Saturday's hike in the coast range mountains, for example. Today's another hazy day at home though weather forecasts indicated it would be much clearer- and warmer- in Paso Robles.
The sky was fogged over as I began my trip to southward. Overhead I could see the sun struggling to burn through the low lying clouds. 45 minutes south, just where the highway ascends a series of hills to leave the Santa Clara Valley, the haze dissipated to reveal a bluish sky. Further south, by the time I reached Salinas, the sky was mostly blue.
As I continued southward through "the salad bowl of America", one of the names for the Salinas Valley (they grow lots of lettuce there), the temperature started to rise. At first it was below 60F, but as I reached Paso Robles just after 11 it was already 70F.
Why am I going to Paso Robles today, when all of my past trips here having been merely passing through? I'm going wine tasting!
There are dozens of wineries clustered around Paso Robles. I've never sampled this wine growing region before- aside from a bottle bought in a store back home every once in a while- so I'm looking forward to finding a lot of new wine. I'll be here overnight tonight (tomorrow is a company holiday) so I've got two days in town.
Continued in next entry: Sideways in Paso Robles
This morning I set off on a road trip to Paso Robles. The drive was fairly simple: basically a straight shot on US-101 for 165 miles from Sunnyvale to, well, Paso Robles. By leaving home around 8:45am on a Sunday I was able to complete the trip with only minor slowdowns due to construction work near Paso Robles. For nearly the entire 165 mile trip my speed never dipped below 60mph.
I've written recently about the hazy weather in the Bay Area. See Saturday's hike in the coast range mountains, for example. Today's another hazy day at home though weather forecasts indicated it would be much clearer- and warmer- in Paso Robles.
The sky was fogged over as I began my trip to southward. Overhead I could see the sun struggling to burn through the low lying clouds. 45 minutes south, just where the highway ascends a series of hills to leave the Santa Clara Valley, the haze dissipated to reveal a bluish sky. Further south, by the time I reached Salinas, the sky was mostly blue.
As I continued southward through "the salad bowl of America", one of the names for the Salinas Valley (they grow lots of lettuce there), the temperature started to rise. At first it was below 60F, but as I reached Paso Robles just after 11 it was already 70F.
Why am I going to Paso Robles today, when all of my past trips here having been merely passing through? I'm going wine tasting!
There are dozens of wineries clustered around Paso Robles. I've never sampled this wine growing region before- aside from a bottle bought in a store back home every once in a while- so I'm looking forward to finding a lot of new wine. I'll be here overnight tonight (tomorrow is a company holiday) so I've got two days in town.
Continued in next entry: Sideways in Paso Robles