As a rare long post: Bike camping in Napa Valley was a great weekend— it felt like a vacation even though it was only two days long. The debrief:
We grabbed some food at the Ferry Building Farmers Market, and barely caught the 10AM high-speed Baylink ferry to Vallejo. It was a nice, scenic ride past islands and sea lions and oil refineries. From there, we headed North to Napa Valley. The first 10 miles or so were not the most pleasant riding— the sprawl of Vallejo, then riding along a state highway with cars zooming by at high speed (though we had a wide, flat, shoulder to ride on the whole way), and finally riding through the surprisingly ugly auto-dealership-filled fringes of Napa.
After a stop to fix the first (and only) flat of the trip, we dropped by a bike shop to make sure tires were up to pressure. There was some sort of street festival going on in Napa that involved a lot of bad art and crafts for sale. We stopped by the Oxbow Public Market (a collection of shops), ate a slab of pancetta at Fatted Calf, and then finally entered Napa Valley itself. The riding became much more scenic as we cruised along Silverado (which had a consistent bike lane or shoulder), and vineyard signs started popping up every few hundred yards. We stopped at Van Der Heyden based on the recommendation of bicycling strangers I’d met at Sports Basement, and it was very entertaining— a group of people crowded into a small shed, tasting good wine and hearing the Dutch owner tell tall tales.
We also stopped at another, where the woman who gave us wine turned out to be a cyclist and discussed other lesser-known rides in the area. Afterwards, we walked around looking for the grape-stomping tub and sneaking a few grapes off the vines to taste.
The weather was perfectly warm and sunny and the miles kept flying by. Before we knew it, it was quarter of 5 and all the other vineyards were closing — whoops.
We considered stopping at a market to get some food to eat at the camp site, but decided it would be more fun to go out for dinner, so we made our way to Bothe-Napa and set up the tent while it was still light.
Then another 5 miles past the end of the valley to the small town of Calistoga, and a leisurely, very un-camping-like dinner.
The ride from Calistoga back to the camp site in the new-moon darkness (except for our bike lights) could have been a little hairy, but no one crashed. And the set of stars & fully-visible milky way this far away from light pollution was amazing.
The next day, we helped push-start an ancient VW bus, then biked down highway 29 back instead of Silverado, starting at a casual pace with a break at Napa Coffee in St Helena and a few other stops to admire the scenery.
Then we kicked it into gear with wine at Cakebread Cellars, where Greg #1 gave us recommendations that led us to Mustards for lunch and Cosentino vineyard next door, where Greg #2 kept us entertained and I picked up some wine (hooray for panniers and the Long Haul Trucker). After lunch, a brief detour through Yountville to look at the outside of the French Laundry and admire their garden, and then it was time to buckle down and start cranking through the miles to get home. A strong, unrelenting headwind beat on us as we headed down the valley, and there were a few minor wrong turns, so this took a few hours longer than expected and we missed the ferry we’d intended to take. It all worked out, though.
All in all, a great weekend, and a route I would do again. It also wasn’t especially challenging from a biking/camping perspective, assuming you’re used to riding those distances (sure, I was tired at the end of the weekend after 90 mile, but the camping/luggage part of it wasn’t hard— if you’ve been curious about self-supported camping I can tell you: just get a rack and some panniers and you can do it).
The image below links to a route map. It’s not the exact route we took, but it’s pretty close (this map cuts out a few detours and an accidental taking-an-on-ramp-onto-the-highway moment— don’t ask).