The photos aren’t great. In fact, I spent a good bit of the trip down cursing the camera because it has this really annoying delay between the moment you click the button and the moment it actually gets around to snapping the photo, which definitely doesn’t help when you’re trying to take photos out of the car window at 70 mph. I played with the shutter speed and various other settings, but couldn’t get it to respond very well. I’ve decided our camera is just a bit lazy. But still, the trip down to Paso Robles was beautiful and just what I needed. Sometimes even a really short trip out of town can give you a new perspective and appreciation for life.
Most of the country between here and there is agricultural flats and rolling green hills, but by the time we neared Paso Robles, we started to see vineyards and orchards, and the land got noticeably drier. The trip was a bit spur-of-the-moment, and by the time we got around to booking a hotel, there wasn’t much available (all the rooms were booked due to the balloon festival, apparently a huge draw. Who knew?). We ended up booking a room at a place called The Country House Inn in Templeton, just south of Paso Robles, and it turned out to be one of those perfect gems that you stumble on when you’re not expecting much. Not that we had any good reason for low expectations, but we weren’t looking for anything fancy… just a reasonably comfortable bed. For less than the Holiday Inn, we stayed in this beautiful, historic Victorian house in a room with a window seat and a clawfoot tub, and french doors onto our own little deck overlooking a nicely landscaped yard. Diane, the owner, runs the place herself and cooked up a delicious breakfast for us in the morning. I highly recommend it if you’re going to be near Paso Robles for a night.
On our way out of town on Saturday we stopped by Adelaida Cellers for a little wine tasting and found a new favorite. We’ll definitely be making another trip down soon! In the meantime, here’s a road trip in pictures…
