I’m heading west to Cali for 5 weeks starting mid February. Specifically, I’ll be in Petaluma, which I understand is a somewhat rural area. So - what’s to do? How easy to get to San Fran by cab? What’s the weather going to be like? Are there any local joints with food to write home about?
Arm rasslin’!!!
I’m sure **Kyla **will be in here to tell you all about it, as she’s a Petaluma native.
I live a few towns north of Petaluma, about 20 miles or so, so I can offer a little.
What comes to mind first for me is
McNear’s , a hopping little restaurant/bar.
And the Mystic next door, a small music venue.
If you’re into antiques, you’ll be in the right town for it. More shops than you can shake a stick at. And an outlet mall And butter. And eggs. 
The downtown area is very quaint, lots of little shops and restaurants, bakeries, etc. I’ll let Kyla give some detail.
Weather in February is usually nice, spring like weather Foggy, it’s nearing the end of the rainy season here, so, pack an umbrella. It’s actually a lovely time of year, as the rolling hills that are usually a dead, burnt brown color are all a bright, lush green.
SF by cab, mmmmm, well, I suppose you could do it, but that’d be a pretty penny. Petaluma is about 30 miles north of SF.
There’s a pretty good bus system that goes into the city though. YOu could also take a bus to the ferry in Sausalito or Larkspur, which would also get you to the city.
You’re pretty much in and on your way to wine country, so tons of wineries just a few miles north on 101. The redwoods, the coast, if you can get around, are all worth visiting.
Boy did I botch that weather paragraph or what. Oops. And after re-reading that poor excuse of a paragraph, I realized I should be more clear. It’s usually only foggy at night and early in the morning. The sun burns up the fog leaving bright, clear, sunny days. If it’s not raining.
Temps are usually mid 60s, cooler at night.
racer is right. Snoopy went there for the Arm Wrestling National Champioships.
He didn’t win.
btw, his map was a globe from Charlie Brown’s room.
Not much, unless you like antiquing. Oh, I see psy mentioned the antique shops. Seriously, there are far, far, far too many for one town to support, so they’re always going out of business and new ones open up in the same places. It’s brilliant.
Um. Yeah. Petaluma is a nice place to live (quiet, safe, good schools, etc.), but not particularly interesting to visit. If you go down to Petaluma Blvd. and Kentucky St., there are a lot of little shops (check out my bookstore, Copperfield’s, I worked there for a couple years) and cafes and whatnot, but nothing really exciting or unusual. I haven’t lived there in a few years, and restaurants change so much that I can’t think of any place with really spectacular food that I know is still open. Oh, Kabuki on Petaluma Blvd. is a great sushi place.
The most exciting thing about Petaluma is its proximity to more exciting places. (Sonoma County is fairly rural, but at least the southern part - which is where Petaluma is - is part of the Bay Area.) But it doesn’t sound like you’ll have a car, and cabs aren’t very common, you’d definitely have to call ahead for one. You can take the Golden Gate Transit to San Francisco easily enough, though, that’s pretty inexpensive. I don’t think there’s any way to visit any of the wineries (and there are many many many nearby) or the coast (a short drive) without a car.
The arm wrestling thing has always been a puzzlement for me. To the best of my knowledge, no one really cares about it, and yet I’ve had people ask me about it in random odd places. I certainly never knew when the tournament was going on and it wasn’t reported about in local papers. Where the heck do people find out about this stuff? Is it all from Peanuts? (Charles Schultz lived in Santa Rosa, and occasionally dropped Sonoma County trivia into his comics.)
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask or email. Address is in my profile.
Chicken farming…?
Thanks all for the replies. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to roam - weekends perhaps. psycat90 mentioned redwoods. One of my earliest memories, was a vacation where we rented a car and drove down 101 for what must have been days. At one point, we drove through a redwood tree that had a tunnel carved into it (obviously). Is that anywhere near Petaluma?
No, not really, all those roadside drive-thru trees are way up north. Like over 100 miles I think.
I’ve only been up that way a couple of times.
But there are redwoods, towards the coast, up around Guerneville to the north, and Muir Woods, to the south.
Zebulon’s Lounge is where I hung out while visiting a friend last year. Pretty fun little jazz bar with friendly people and good music.
My first and only time in Petaluma was about two weeks ago. We spent the night there in a Motel 6 with my mother-in-law and her boyfriend, before heading into wine country the next day. We ate at a surprisingly good mexican restaurant on McDowell Blvd., in a strip mall with a Trader Joe’s. (There were two Mexican places in the strip mall: a taqueria and a sit-down place – this was the sit-down place.)
That’s all I know about Petaluma. The Motel 6 was unremarkable.
Visit various pilgrimage sites regarding Winona Ryder?
You must have googled this…please don’t tell me you knew about chicken farming off the top of your head.
Petaluma was, for a time, the “Egg Basket of the World”. The incubator was invented there, and lots of buildings that have since been repurposed still have signs proclaiming them to be hatcheries.
The last hatchery closed down when I was in elementary school. So, no more. But I had a couple chickens as pets for years (my parents don’t live on a farm or anything, just a regular house) and no one thought it was particularly odd. So there you go.
AFAIK, there are no monuments to Winona Ryder. Heh.
Upon reflection, the most interesting thing about Petaluma is that it has some of the older buildings in the whole of California. It was incorporated in the 1850s, so it’s older than most towns in CA and although by some weird geological fluke, it was almost totally unharmed by the great quake of 1906 - it’s only about 20 miles from the epicenter of the quake (we used to go there on field trips) and towns to both the north and south were devastated. Result? Lots of movies and commercials are filmed there. The two you’re most likely to have seen are American Graffiti and Peggy Sue Got Married. Ronald Reagan also filmed his “Morning in America” campaign ad there.