Back about a year ago an unanticipated guest blog post from a new transplant to San Francisco from the Midwest, who just happened to love wine and touring on her bicycle, came to our attention. There had been no direct contact leading up to the post, yet here was a new Suisun Valley visitor explaining how she found our valley and how easy it turned out to be to do it in her intermodal way, without a car.
The account of this interesting wine country travel can only be retold in the words of the author, Jen Rizzo, who explained it to us in follow up recently. Jen was kind enough to allow us to post those comments here, knowing others might like this type of experience.
“The story of how we found Suisun Valley is pretty simple: a friend on twitter suggested we visit. He lives in Healdsburg and has for quite some time, and he’s a cyclist. We were looking for a good bike ride and an opportunity to experience wine country, and Suisun Valley was his first suggestion. We were making our plans pretty close to Memorial Day weekend, we were on a pretty tight budget, and we really wanted a smaller experience than what we thought we’d get by going to Napa or Sonoma. A couple of google searches and some time plotting locations out on a map revealed a pretty flat, easy twenty mile loop, and we were able to get a relatively inexpensive hotel in town.
I think it should also be noted that reaching you all from San Francisco was so easy without a car – easier than Napa, Sonoma or Healdsburg! We could take our bicycles on BART and Amtrak, and the whole trip took us only an hour and a half from our BART station in the city to the Fairfield Amtrak stop. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. The bus routes from San Francisco to just about anywhere else take forever and there’s always a fear that we can’t get both of our bikes on board. Car-free transit is really important to us, and you all certainly provided a fantastic experience.
We also got an opportunity to just sit down and talk with people. We didn’t want to just taste a couple of wines – we can do that in San Francisco. We wanted to meet the people that love what they do, and we wanted to listen to people talk about their products. Everyone we met was incredibly kind and happy to talk at great length about their wines. I love wine, but wouldn’t consider myself to be any sort of expert. People were happy to teach us, and we were happy to learn.”
The Amtrak station is in Suisun City, just a couple miles southeast of Suisun Valley. There is a local bicycle shop on Suisun Valley Road if mechanicals arise. Should you get the urge to try this adventure the spring months ahead might be great timing. This journey is also feasible from the Sacramento metro, not to mention a quick day trip down from Davis, the bicycle capital of the west coast.
Bicycle activity in Suisun Valley is picking up momentum quickly, give it a try.
