One final day in the Bay Area and I'm spending it at the beach, my favorite place. I'm between Moss Beach and Half Moon Bay, about 25 miles, give or take, south of San Francisco on Highway 1.

The weather is perfect. Sunny, about 60 degrees. Spent a good part of the morning walking the waterfront, from just south of Moss Beach at Mavericks, one of the premier surfing spots in the continental U.S., heading to Half Moon Bay itself, about six miles south.

It's an easy thing to do, and I'd recommend it highly, especially if you've been to San Francisco a lot and are looking for something off the beaten path.

There are increasing numbers of places to stay... and they range from the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay to inns along the sea, including Karen Brown's Sea Cove Inn in Moss Beach. Brown is a respected author of several travel books on lodging. Her inn certainly deserves to be included in her own writings.

There are more places, though. Try Princeton by the Sea or check the lodging in Miramar... two communities between the centers of Moss Beach and Half Moon Bay. You'll be right on the coast... and I mean RIGHT on the water in some cases, within range of some nice food and places to wander... and increasingly interesting shopping, if you can't stand being away from it. You won't be paying as much to stay here either.

The beach here is cozy, and it's quiet. And it's a nice break.

It's a lovely drive north into the city, if you want to do that. Or, you can cross Highway 92 and head south to Palo Alto and Stanford or to San Jose. Pretty easy access to all. Best part, you get to come home to the sea at night.

Wish I could, but I have to get back to work. Honest.

One more place to visit in the valley, if you want to keep the architecture thing going. Who wouldn't? It's all too bizarre.

The Quixote Winery, on the Silverado Trail in Napa, opened to the public this year. There are no straight lines, there are golden turrets, there is color everywhere. You can read its history on its Web site. Note the history of its architect, especially. Who cares what the wine tastes like?

I'll tell you, I finished the day Saturday just the way I like to finish days in this wine country north of San Francisco Bay ... sitting outside in the later afternoon sun, having some wine with a bunch of friends who go way back, heading off to a casual dinner later on with no change of clothes required and then spending the rest of the evening simply hanging out, talking.

Nice idea of a vacation if you can get it. It's also, according to just about every travel study I've read lately, the way more and more of us are spending vacations ... some place easy to get to, easy to get around in, amenable to large groups of families and friends. We're increasingly taking them in bites, more like extended weekends, spending more as long as "together" is part of the equation.

The bunch of us polished off the last couple houses on the kitchen and garden tour (which, let me tell you, included a lot of living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms ... sort of like open houses) in quick fashion in the afternoon. I wish I had photographs to include here ... but no photos were allowed, anywhere.

If they had been, I'd have loaded this post with pics of a home right out of somebody's post-modern design book for homes that, well, I don't know ... you just might not want to come home to. For me, there was too much glass, too much metal, too muck stark and a living room ceiling in its great room that would rival any office building foyer I could think of. And, man, way, way, way up there!

There's a rose maze out back at this place, a huge, interior wall of glass that looks out onto a (yes, again) lap pool and a two-acre pond. There are two tennis courts here, and a bocci ball court. But what got me were what looked like acres of gravel and stone surrounding the house. No lawn, no decorative grasses, nothing really indigenous, nothing, but acres of stone. With tree after tree, each planted in its own tiny circle of a break from that stone, in perfect rows ... everywhere.

Everything was perfect.

Except, in the pond, where there were swimming two of the biggest swans I'd ever seen. I stood outside for a while, watching them. Then they began swimming my way. They got bigger. And bigger.

I don't do monstrous birds. We left.

The home is in Napa, off the road so you can't see it. If I find a link to anything about it, I'll post it. It's on Vichy Avenue. Perhaps that accounts for its structural accountability.

Our break came at the Trefethen Family Vineyards in Napa. The present winery dates from 1973, the original property as winery from 1886 and called, then, Eshcol.

The winery says "Trefethen has never purchased a single outside grape." In other words, what you drink, comes from what you see.

Shannon Walli, a self-described Southern California girl, poured for us in the reserve room (a beautiful space to sit, let me tell you).

She poured some Pinot: "We make the very best Pino."
You do? What about Oregon?
"That's very good Pinot."
Better?
"We pour the best Pinot in California."
Ah. She passed the test, according to me. Give credit where credit is due. And we hadn't even told her we were visitors from the north.
And - she even gave me a hug in the parking lot.
That's good service.

Dinner was at The Boon Fly Café, in Napa, in the Carneros area and part of a big complex called The Carneros Inn. Nice, small, very casual place, worth a visit. At the very least to fight over the beer battered sweet onion rings. I think we had three orders. Maybe it was four.

Regardless, those and a nicely done apple crumble tart finished off the day.

I like this.

Closing in on 90 degrees. This ain't no place like home.

The third house is a wide-open-inside number, Asian influences, in Napa itself. I like the description: "30 tons of rocks and boulders were hand-selected for lichen and moss to be the 'bones' of the garden design."
Jeeze I'd like to be the lucky lichen that lives here.

(By the way, it's too bad the tour guide book isn't online somewhere ... at least I can't find it. Some nice recipes are included with the description of each home. We understand that valley chefs are assigned to each home and provide a taste of their wares for visitors. Missed them at our first stop ... apparently we arrived during a hand-off period. At the next two stops, we had Ahi Poke Salad in Cucumber Chips from Marcos Uribe of Celadon and My Mother's Strawberry Shortcake from Bob Hurley of Hurley's Restaurant & Bar.)

The shortcake was perfect for staring at ANOTHER lap pool AND a potted palm tree (we're talking a three-people-to-lift-it-sized pot) in the middle of the dining room table. "Hi mom! Is that you over there? Call me! Nice dinner!)

Most exciting adventure here ... one of us locked the car keys in the trunk of one of our cars. Oops. It's the trunk with the chilled wine. Oops.

Continuing the reports from Saturday afternoon -- by the time we get to the second house in St. Helena, the temp is climbing ... mid 80s. I am the only one sweating. What a nice feeling.

This place is a combination of a shack built in the 1800s, another portion of stone built years later and a third structure finished in 2004. It's the one house you can actually read about in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not bad.

More outdoor dining ... (hint, try a yeast tablet, someone tells me, before dinner and the mosquitoes won't touch you... "neither will anybody else," a friend said.)

More lap pools. What's with lap pools?

My favorite line from this home's desciption in the official tour booklet is this: "The new owners... consider it a work in progress."

Really. The folks who own the first house we saw have the same consideration of theirs. Hmmm... I'd love to know their definitions of progress.

Onward.

Pardon the interruption in the filing of these dispatches from events on Saturday, but this is big news down here and just in - early Sunday morning.

If you're in the Bay Area now or intend to come down here soon, heads up.

Overnight Saturday night a tanker truck fire literally melted part of an East Bay freeway, destroying nearly 250 yards of it and making traffic a huge mess - one that likely won't go away soon.

Check it out ... and avoid, most likely for months.

And note this paragraph from a San Fransico Chronicle early report on the fire: "The tanker, which was traveling from I-80 full of vehicle-ready gasoline, seems to have disappeared. One Caltrans worker at the scene held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to describe how big the tanker is now."

Important story. Keep abreast if you have plans here, expecially if it involves travel in and out of the Oakland airport.

You need to see this place ... Castello di Amorosa
It's close to Calistoga near the top of Napa Valley. It is enormous. Fifty, count 'em, fifty of my houses would fit inside this place. Just read about it and weep ... for a variety of reasons.

Hey ... it fits here. Maybe it's a tad larger than some of the homes, wineries, caves I've seen since I arrived. But whoever said valley denizens don't have a touch of the Disney about them just isn't paying attention ... or has over-imbibed on ice wine.

Pondering the appearance of a turret that appears to have been shot off in some pitched battle came this response from the front seat: "Of course, as we all know, there were so many English civil wars fought in the Napa Valley. How foolish of me..."

A little torture after dinner? Yes, there is a dungeon, and there are devices. Enjoy!

It's 1 p.m.in the Napa Valley. It's 82 degrees. What's the temp in Seattle, somebody?

Just finished seeing two of the five homes on the tour ... both of them in St. Helena.

First place we saw sits in a Zinfandel field and is of Tuscan design, they tell us. Finished just last year. I suspect that may be un-Tuscan, considering most of Tuscany's homes of similar ilk were built a few years earlier, wouldn't you agree?

Its kitchen is pretty much as large as the main floor of my house. Has a few things mine doesn't ... like the island that came from a nunnery and an in-kitchen, wood-fired bread oven. Oh, and the wine glass washer and the hand-painted wall art.

I helped a gentleman, bent over at the bread oven, who was trying to translate the Italian painted in a arc over the oven's opening.

"It looks like it says pizza oven from hell," he, um, surmised, loudly.

No, I replied,. it reads hot bread, good wine and best friends.

"Well, where are they?" he asked. I moved on.

Take aways? The glass cupboards built over windows, allowing you to see your dishes - and your significant other using the lap pool outside.

The house next door, on which many commented, as they were leaving, looked much nicer and more suited to the valley.

Oh ... and there was the woman who walked by with the comment of the moment: "Okay,":she stated to her friends: "One more house and we get a drink."

We all decided to adopt the same stance.
On to house number two.

(One more item: To see most of these houses, you're required to remove your shoes. I would imagine, staring at lots and lots of bare feet, that there is enough money in pedicures here to pay for a kitchen remodel.)