wine, geyser, mud

So Saturday we did an early Valentines and went on a daytrip to Calistoga which I planned as a surprise. (Calistoga is the town just north of Napa and east of Sonoma) Here's one of the pics.


Old Faithful

We left home at about 10:45am and got up there in a couple hours. We went first to Clos Pegases which was a really interesting winery because the owner collects a lot of art, both modern and ancient (even stuff from the 1st century). The tour took about half an hour and it was as much a museum and art gallery tour as it was a winery tour. Totally recommend visiting that winery.

After that we headed into Calistoga's downtown for some lunch. The downtown is tiny but really cute. Not quite as nice the St. Helena downtown just south of it. That was much larger and had more upscale shops. Anyways, after stuffing ourselves with fries with truffle oil, carnitas, fish tacos and mushrooms, we headed up to see California's Old Faithful Geyser. I had never seen a geyser before so it was pretty interesting but the attraction is a bit of a dump. The information about the geysers was printed out on plain paper and slipped into one of those plastic title page covers and stapled to a piece of wood. Oh well. I patted myself on the back for having printed out a dollar off coupon from the Internet for a total of $7 admission per person. The coolest part about the attraction was an area where they kept these special goats that faint when they're scared. There's only 500 in the US. They were super cute but I felt bad for them because they had a pretty tiny enclosed area.


baby fainting goat

After hanging out with the goats we headed out to Silver Rose for a rather unimpressive wine tasting and then went back into town for some tea and to kill time. At 5:45pm we headed over to Golden Haven for our mud bath appointment, the surprise I had been saving up all day. I didn't have high expectations because the reviews were rather mixed. Some complained about the noise level, others about the somewhat sketchy neighbourhood, and one fat lady complained that no one was there to help pull her out of the mud. But that was OK because I was armed with another Internet coupon. Instead of paying $74 per person, we were doing the nightowl special (6pm) with coupon for $49. Basically we got a private mud room with a shower, mud trough and jacuzzi. You do 10 minutes suspended in a huge tub of mud, shower off with mineral water, 10 minutes in the mineral water jacuzzi and then 20 minutes wrapped up in a blanket in another room to rest and listen to music. The mud part was a little gross. It's not some nice white clay like the stuff that goes on your face. It's lumpy stinky mud that feels, as Simon describes, like wet lint. But at the end of it all, the mud and hot spring water makes you feel like jello and your skin smooth like a baby's. I think I liked soaking in the spring water more than sitting in the mud but at least I can say I did it.