The 2008 Sonoma County GeoRally and Winter GeOlymp

Time to get on the road and head to the Sonoma 2008 Georally. Since we were in Ukiah, we had about an hour and a half to the start of the rally. We did manage to grab one cache in Ukiah that was just down the road from our hotel. We figured we needed to start the day off right to give us incentive.

It has been a while since we have been in this part of the state. We were surprised to see so many vineyards this far north. They have probably been here a long time but we haven’t so everything was a pleasant surprise on this trip! It was a pretty drive. Too bad we were on a mission so we couldn’t stop to enjoy all aspects of it. We couldn’t even stop for caches as we wanted to be at the rally in time to get all the instructions.

We arrived at the Cotati Park and Ride along Highway 101 a little before start time. We had an opportunity to enjoy a cup of coffee from the local java place before we received the instructions for the 2008 Sonoma Rally. There were three routes and we ended up on the Northern route that took us north of Cotati to places like Rohnert Park, Healdsburg, Sebastopol, and on a lot of back roads through the vineyards.

We had lots of questions to answer as we followed the predetermined route. We did take a little time in the beginning to find some caches along the way, but soon we were in an area that was outside our anticipated caching area and we didn’t have any caches to find. So, we concentrated on the route and the questions.

Along the way, we passed two dairies of the year, a purple hubcap lady, a black and white metal cow structure, an orange truck with a dog sculpture in the front seat, several churches, a few bagel shops, a couple of old bridges, historic district 2, a druid, poor man’s flat, at least six palm trees, and, a few roads twice. We also saw emil, pinestone, R-L Ranch, a mailbox covered with ladybugs, a tree farm, a man carrying a canoe, Black Emerald Winery, the home of the hounds, hoof beat park. West North Street, and a couple of school roads.

When we were all finished and joined the others for a pasta dinner, we learned that we make a pretty good rally team. We came in tied for second for those following the north route. We could have filed a protest because there were really 5 churches on one road and everyone agreed but the “judge”. He said there were only 4. We all wanted to take him for a ride, but since it had been a fun day, we let him off the hook. Besides, we were happy with second place!

After dinner we headed back to Ukiah for the night. We had one more mission on this trip and that was to look into the mouth of the whale--tomorrow. We needed our sleep tonight!