By Paul Dhadda, CEO, Exquisite Travel Group
One of the quiet advantages of living in Placer County is that we are inside two hours of three completely different landscapes. Most people here under-use that, because a place you could drive to on a whim never feels like a trip worth planning.
Plan it properly and these are genuinely good weekends.
1. North Lake Tahoe - 1 hour 15
The obvious one, and the closest. Northstar, Palisades Tahoe and Truckee in winter; the lake, Sand Harbor and the Flume Trail in summer.
Two properties turn it from a drive into a weekend: the Ritz-Carlton at Northstar, mid-mountain in the trees, and Edgewood Tahoe down on the south shore with the water in front of it.
The single most useful thing to know: Sand Harbor's car park fills by mid-morning in summer and they close the entrance when it does. If that beach is the plan, you are leaving Roseville by seven. Our full Tahoe weekend guide covers north shore versus south and where to stay.
2. Napa Valley - 1 hour 15
Closer from here than from San Francisco, which people forget.
Go on a weekday or a Sunday. Saturday on Highway 29 between Yountville and St Helena is a traffic jam with tastings attached, and the tasting rooms are at capacity. Take the Silverado Trail instead of 29 whichever day you go — parallel, prettier, and it moves.
Nearly everything is now by appointment. Book two to four weeks out, and ask whether the tasting fee is waived with a purchase — on a two- or three-bottle buy it usually is, which changes the arithmetic considerably.
3. Healdsburg and Dry Creek - 1 hour 45
Further than Napa and, for a weekend rather than a day, better. Healdsburg is the nicest town in either valley to stay in — a proper square, serious restaurants, and small family wineries in Dry Creek and the Russian River where you will often be talking to the person who made the wine.
Tasting fees run half what Napa charges.
4. Nevada City and the Gold Country - 1 hour
The most underrated weekend on this list.
Nevada City is a preserved Gold Rush town in the pines with a genuinely good restaurant scene and no crowds to speak of. In autumn the colour along Highway 49 is as good as anywhere in California.
South of it, the Amador County wine region grows old-vine zinfandel at a third of Napa prices, and the tasting rooms are still places where someone talks to you rather than processes you.
5. The Sonoma Coast and Mendocino - 3 hours
At the edge of a weekend but worth the drive, especially in July and August when the Valley is at 100°F and the coast is at 60°F.
Mendocino village sits on a headland above the Pacific and looks like a New England town that took a wrong turn. Anderson Valley wineries are on the way in — pinot noir and some of the best cool-climate whites in the state.
6. Monterey and Carmel - 3 hours
Point Lobos is the finest short walk in California and it is worth the drive by itself. Carmel for the village and the beach, Monterey for the aquarium — book that ahead in high season.
The Friday rule
The two worst stretches of driving in the region are eastbound I-80 toward Tahoe on a Friday afternoon and westbound I-80 on a Sunday afternoon.
Leave before 2pm or after 7pm. Come home Sunday morning rather than Sunday evening. And where your schedule allows, book Thursday to Saturday instead of Friday to Sunday — same two nights, half the traffic, and meaningfully cheaper lodging almost everywhere on this list.
Which direction, which season
July and August: go west or up. The coast and anything above 6,000 feet.
September and October: the best travel weeks of the year here. Harvest in wine country, aspens turning in the Sierra, and the heat finally broken.
November to March: Tahoe for snow, wine country at its cheapest and quietest — a Tuesday tasting room in February is a completely different experience from an August Saturday.
April and May: the foothills. Wildflowers, full rivers, everything green before it turns gold.
When to hand it to us
For two people and a weekend, book it yourself. It is an hour away.
Where we earn our place is when the weekend gets complicated — a family reunion where twenty-five people need lodging that works as a group, a milestone birthday at Edgewood, a corporate retreat at Northstar, or the appointment-only wineries that take no public bookings at all.
These weekends are also often the rehearsal. A lot of our clients test how a group travels together in Mendocino before taking the same group somewhere that costs ten times as much.
Roseville Travel has grown up here in Placer County. Call us at +1(916) 782-6363 when the trip involves more than one car.