Starting the Adventure Westward!
Highland Park Reservoir in Pittsburgh
Our cross-country adventure began yesterday when we packed up two sedated cats, two bikes, and enough of our possessions to get us through our trip and the first couple months in Sonoma, and we headed seven hours west to Pittsburgh. The moving, clearing, and cat-drugging part of the preparation was quite taxing and I spent the first couple hours of the trip dazed and somewhat stunned. We arrived safely at my parents home, where the cats will be vacationing until we get ourselves a place to live. I am just now starting to breathe normally again and think about the adventures to come. Its quite a 35-day itinerary and we will be exploring many states and places that are virgin territory to us both. We plan to search out the best food, wineries, farmer’s markets, and hiking that we can at each stop and I’ll be highlighting what we find here on this blog.
Here’s the order of our adventures:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Chicago, Illinois
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Park Falls, Wisconsin (Northern Wisconsin…my grandfather lives on a lake here)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Badlands, South Dakota
Black Hills, South Dakota
Billings, Montana
Silver Gate, Montana (Northern tip of Yellowstone Park)
Central Yellowstone Park
Grand Tetons/Jackson Hole
Meridian, Idaho (in Idaho wine country along the Snake River Valley)
Portland, Oregon
Willamette Valley wine country, Oregon
Newport, Oregon on the northern Oregon coast
Port Orford, Oregon on the southern Oregon coast
Crater Lake, Oregon
Klamath Cove, California on the northern California coast
Mendocino and the Alexander Valley on the northern California coast
Arrival in Sonoma
….and so off we go!
I've recently moved my life from Brooklyn, New York to Sonoma County, California to pursue a life in food and wine. I am now the executive chef at