You can get commercial information from NapaValley.COM.  For years, I found The Best of the Wine Country to be a useful guidebook to the area, but it’s out of date now. Wine Wine is the first order of business.  There are more than 400 wineries in the Napa … “Wine Country”

Yosemite is arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth. I have been then tens of times, and never tire of visiting the park. While the Valley floor can be crowded, it’s still worth visiting. For a first time visitor to Yosemite I would … “Yosemite”

San Francisco is a beautiful, world class city. There are numerous museums, places of nature beautiful, great food, and well known tourist spots. You could easily spend several weeks exploring San Francisco and only scratch the surface. The SF City Pass can be a good … “San Francisco”

Part of my visiting northern California series. I would recommend taking two days to explore the area around Monterey.  If you had a lot of time you could make it a four day leg and continue down Route 1 to Hearst Castle / San Simeon, … “Monterey Penisula & Big Sur”

Monta Loma (MLN) is a great neighborhood which has a real community. Long before nextdoor, the community had a website, mailing list and later a wiki. We have community and block parties, a gardening group, CERT team, etc. There was (and maybe still is) a … “Monta Loma Neighborhood and the Mid-Peninsula”

… with a focus on the mid-peninsula. There are a number of general websites which cover the bay area including Yahoo Bay Area, SFGate (Chronicle & Examiner), San Jose Mercury News, CitySearch SF, Yelp and Craigslist.  This post is mostly about living in the SF bay area. I have a separate post … “San Francisco Bay Area”

The following recommendations I have given friends from outside northern California who were planning a vacation here.  Northern California Best Places has a lot of other ideas, though it’s a out of date now. These days you can get a “look” at many places through Google … “Visiting Northern California”