Sonoma trip, day 4

Today is the day I get to go the the Charles M Schulz Museum. It's one of those things that would be on my bucket list if I had one. I love the Peanuts characters and I am so glad that I get to see the museum. We got there when it opened at 10 and stayed for two hours. It's not very large, but it was pretty interesting to me. The first floor was dedicated to the history of Schulz and his comics and the other half was about the history of all comics. So there was more to see besides just good ol' Charlie Brown. The second floor of the museum was a hands on cartoon design lab and Charles M Schulz's office was moved into the space. There was also a section on the different toys made from the characters over the years. Outside there was a yard with a kite eating tree, and various life-sized characters. After we went through the gift shop we walked over to the Warm Puppy Cafe where there was an ice rink that Schulz just loved.

It was a good clean fun way to spend the morning before an afternoon of more wine tasting. We drove to the Francis Ford Coppola Winery for our first tasting. It was pretty cool in the tasting room because there were 5 Oscars on a shelf above the wines. We bought more wine then took some time to eat the sandwiches we packed that we bought at the deli last night. We drove from town to town and stopped at Simi Winery. They staff was a little pushy but we did find one bottle worth purchasing before we high-tailed it out of there. From there we stopped at Wine Country Chocolates, then BR Cohn Winery. BR Cohn is the manager of the Doobie Brothers so of course he had a line called Doobie Reds. They were quite pricey at $480 for the 12-bottle collection. I suppose when you divide it up by the 12 bottles it's not that bad considering we paid $50 for some wines. BR Cohn also had a line of vinegars and oils that we tried and ended up purchasing. After that, we stopped at Vella Cheese factory for some California cheeses to take home.

We ended the day with a stop at Johnny Garlic's which is one of Guy Fieri's restaurants. The place was filled with tourists and surprisingly, the food was pretty good. I expected it to be something like that awful TGIF that Fieri hawks on television commercials but it was much better than that.