This past week, instead of the Bedlam Blue Bungalow, my husband Brian and I found ourselves in a cottage, surrounded by fat pink oleander, in the inner Calistoga: a town big enough for only one inner and no outers at all, which is perhaps what makes it so sweet.
It’s the kind of place with a labyrinth on the main drag, right in front of the laundromat.
Sam Brannan founded Calistoga. A developer and journalist, he edited the state’s first newspaper, the California Star, thus making himself the first millionaire in the Golden State.
In the 1850s, Brannan grew a fascination for the geothermal hot springs in the Napa Valley, so he dreamed of building a resort in the style of Saratoga Springs in New York. He built cottages lined with palm trees on what is now Wappo Avenue. The story goes that before he could see the incorporation of the city (on Jan. 6, 1886), he imbibed one too many before he proposed a toast claiming he would build the Saratoga of California, which instead came out as “the Calistoga of Sarafornia.” The name stuck.
Our weekday getaway was a Sasb idea. The pandemic had given us all enough quality time with our children, and she reasoned that sometimes to keep loving them you need a day or two away. With that she planned a “micro-vacay,” with a responsible adult left behind to ensure that our collective teenagers did not storm the Golden Gate and sack the city.
Vacations are about breaking patterns. With no psychic Starbucks, I wandered into Sam’s General Store and tried my chai with oat milk instead. Calistoga is a soft-paced town, full of late sunny mornings and couples sitting on the porch with their lattes, swapping sections of The Chronicle. I toasted one neighbor with my chai, and she was startled at how much I looked like the last page of the Wednesday Datebook.
The first night, Mordecai and Sasb took us to Evangeline: Everything from the fried pickles to the spring risotto, with pea tendrils and mascarpone, was a delight.
Sasb can be a little wary, knowing anything we do together is fair game for the column. She decided that the next day, a wine tasting was safe, and picked Castello di Amarosa (the Castle of Love). Smack-dab in the Palisade Hills, they built a 13th century medieval Tuscan-style castle, complete with drawbridge, moat, towers, catapults and ironwork dragons. The pamphlet said torture chamber as well, but I took a wrong turn at the Cabernets and missed it.
Bach chamber music played live. They matched us with a sommelier named Stephane, direct from Paris. He turned out to be the wine whisperer, never rolling his eyes, even when I asked if they sold any boxed wine. And if anything’s going to make you buy a $55 Vermentino, it’s a French accent.
This little adventure settled us. With only two days, we did not get to the hot springs, the mud baths, Old Faithful Geyser or even the Petrified Forest. We did not need to.
Vacations are not about what you do; they are about what you don’t have to do: You don’t answer emails, don’t grouse about the plumber not fixing the faucet, don’t argue with the school district about individualized education plans.
Vacations are about meandering walks on the Oat Mill Mine trail — purple mountain garlands and golden yarrow blooming in the heat and drought — the California poppies just a little more hesitant, as they pushed their way through the ashes of last year’s fire. This was the old stagecoach trail, through the oak and chaparral, maybe even the same route that Robert Louis Stevenson (yet another San Francisco journalist) and his wife, Fanny, took on their honeymoon.
Vacations are about remembering that in the end, I did leave my heart in San Francisco (as well as my two sons), which is why I smiled when the fog greeted us as we skimmed home across the Golden Gate Bridge a day later, returning to a land hidden in the mist: the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.
Kevin Fisher-Paulson’s column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com