At sunset the wind was calm, but it kicked up quite a bit overnight. My spot was sheltered but near the top of the ridge, and the gusts coming through the treetops brought back memories of the night I spent at Sibley Backpack Camp. Not raining this time, but a bit difficult to sleep well when the tent is being buffeted.
The treeline along the ridge had been burned in the Kinkaid Fire in 2019; some of the trees were dead, and most of the rest had lost their crowns and were regrowing from the base. The wind brought odd, hollow clacking sounds from the trees.
A small benefit of restless sleep is that it provides an opportunity to observe a meteor shower, with multiple shooting stars streaking impressively across the sky.
Oddly, the wind calmed down after sunrise, so the morning was bright and clear.
My campsite didn’t have a great surface for making breakfast, so I initially decided to head down the hill and find a picnic table or something like that. But after I packed up and hauled the bike back down the path, I saw that there was a pile of rocks across the road with a lovely view of the valley, so I pulled out the cooking gear and made coffee and oatmeal in the morning sun.
I was clearly interrupting the morning routine of the local lizards.
The descent into Alexander Valley was wonderful, fun turns and expansive views.
A historical cycling destination in the Alexander Valley was Jimtown Store, a little outpost along Highway 128 that was a natural stopping point for many different loop rides. Jimtown Store closed in 2019 but is supposed to be reopening, under new management, as a dim sum place called Jimtown and Then Sum. I rolled by, and they look like they’re close to ready but are unfortunately not open yet (May 2025).
My plan from here was to head south towards Napa, meeting up with Nancy at Bothe-Napa State Park. That’s a pretty short day, so I was going to add in Franz Valley School Road as a slight diversion. Highway 128 is not terrible but it has way more traffic than any of the other roads I’d been on so far.
Franz Valley is hard to beat for cycling; rolling through farmland, vineyards, oak groves and volcanic landscapes with no traffic.
Franz Valley School Road ends at Petrified Forest Road, which is even worse than I remembered it, just overwhelmed with traffic. Doing this loop from Calistoga, I’d definitely recommend going counter-clockwise (north on 128, south on Franz Valley) just so you can take Petrified Forest in the downhill direction.
Arriving in Calistoga, I found that the Vine Trail, a project that a friend of mine at Kimley-Horn has been working on, is now open all the way from Calistoga to St. Helena, entirely off-road and with fairly limited road crossings, and rolling straight through Bothe-Napa.
I enjoyed Vine Trail more than I’d expected to. Part of the vision for the project was that no vines would be taken out of production, and all easements would be voluntary. The project team has had to negotiate with every landholder from Napa to Calistoga, which has resulted in each segment having substantially different character. It starts on wide pavement alongside the water treatment plant, then crosses into a vineyard on gravel, then rolls along Highway 29 as a side path, then dips behind a berm on cobblestones, and so on.
One of my pet peeves on bike paths is fake curves and contours, such as those on the waterfront pathway heading into Buffalo. Pathways get built that way because they look nicer in renderings, but they’re not nicer to ride. The Vine Trail has contours and curves, too, but those contours and curves are dictated by the constraints of the space; getting around a drainage culvert, or through a narrow easement on a particular property. Intuitively, it feels like the designers have worked with me to find a way through a complicated space. As they say, good design is 99% invisible. In Buffalo, the designers have added complexity to a route for no reason beyond their own aesthetic, and I intuitively resent it.
Another insight on the trail: I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a YIELD TO BICYCLES sign:
That’s because in spatial hierarchies in the U.S., bikes are usually beneath cars on roads, and horses and pedestrians on pathways, so every sign of this type has bikes yielding to other users of the space.
But this sign isn’t targeted at other path users; it’s targeted at construction and farm workers who use this part of the path to move equipment. So while tourists on bikes may not be above walking tourists in the hierarchy, we’re above laborers.
[I think about this kind of thing because my thesis is that the project of U.S. bike advocacy is primarily an attempt to alter the spatial hierarchy.]
The pathway uses a HAWK beacon to cross Highway 29. I’m a little skeptical of HAWKs for bike access, especially at road intersections (like Ashby and Hillegass in Berkeley) where it’s not clear how a bike is supposed to activate the signal, or what state the signal is in for the road you’re attempting to cross, or what turning drivers are going to do. I think they work better at locations like this one, where the crosswalk is the only thing the signal is operating for. It still has the problem that you can’t really tell what state the signal is in for the drivers; pressing the button gives an audible “Wait,” but no other change visible to path users until the walk signal is activated. Still, better than trying to cross 29 on your own.
Arriving at Bothe-Napa, I was able to drop my gear at the yurt campsite (luxury!), and started to realize that I was on day 3 of a bike tour and I hadn’t yet had a cheeseburger. So I headed south to check out the next segment of the Vine Trail, on the way to Gott’s Roadside in St. Helena. The trail was good until it hit St. Helena, where it transitioned to the road in an awkward way. The burger was awesome. The beer, Henhouse Incredible IPA, wasn’t as good as last night’s can. But it was still pretty good.
I had some time to kill before Nancy’s arrival, so I rode back to Calistoga on the Vine Trail, had another beer at the Lincoln Ave. Brewery, and then rolled back to Bothe-Napa to clean up and get ready for a fancy dinner out.
GPS track is only for the initial ride to Bothe-Napa.