Spaniels' California Adventure: Honeymoon Roadtrip

Though I am a sucker for all things chronological (am I? I don't know, but it seemed like the right thing to say), I'm going to start at the end—with our honeymoon! I can't wait to tell you all of the exciting wedding stories (and show you the beautiful pictures! I have seen the on-line gallery, and lo, it was good!), but while we Spaniels wait for the full disc, I thought I would regale you with the harrowing and heroic tale of...

Yet we didn't go to Anaheim...*

As I mentioned before the wedding, Mr. Spaniel and I planned a road trip adventure for our honeymoon starting with a long (very, very long) drive from Malibu to Sebastopol, a small town in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County.

Day 1 route (source)
We took the opportunity to sleep in a little and got a late start on Sunday morning—too late for breakfast, which is the first (and worst) step towards a cranky Spaniel. So we decided to go through a fast food drive through and grab me some Cini-minis so that I could act human.

I hadn't had them since high school, but man did they hit the spot! (source)
This was around when it started to hit me that, HEY, I'm MARRIED! See, I don't like to share food. If you want Cini-minis, you buy yourself some Cini-minis, because I ordered myself as much as I plan to eat. And so on. But when Mr. Spaniel asked for a half of one while he was driving, I actually offered him a whole Cini-mini. (Does that sound like it's not a big deal? No, it's totally a big deal.) It's like I finally realized that, yes, I will eat again, that as soon as I tell him I am hungry he will find a place for us to eat, and it's okay if I share my food with him while it's in front of me. I don't usually think of myself as a terribly selfish person anyway, but in that moment, I really felt like if it was mine, it was his. We'd been living like a married couple for a long time already, but I'd never felt that way before. It was a really nice feeling. Even if it was predicated on crappy junk food.

We stopped for a late lunch at Harris Ranch in Coalinga, which is famous for its beef (and has the cow manure smell around the exterior to prove it—ah, Central Valley and your sweet aroma!). Mr. Spaniel had the tri-tip Caesar salad, which was a little weird, and I had the flank steak flatbread pizza, which was delicious. (I let him eat some of that, too. Who am I?!)

We made it to our destination in Sebastopol a little after dark, and we were exhausted. So we grabbed a map of the local wineries, marked off the ones we wanted to make sure to visit the next day (Iron Horse Vineyards for its bubbly, Dutton Estate Winery for its pinot noir, and Marimar Estate for its organic wines), and passed out for the night.

Coming up next: wine country in the daytime! With actual pictures, because my camera was no longer in my luggage at the bottom of the trunk!

* Image modified from one found here.