☰Day Trips

Santa Rosa makes a better base for the wider region than for itself. Healdsburg, thirty minutes north, has a polished plaza ringed with tasting rooms and is the gateway to the Alexander, Dry Creek, and Russian River wine valleys. Sebastopol is fifteen minutes west — smaller, scruffier, with the long-running farm trails and the Barlow market hall. Sonoma town is half an hour southeast around the mission and plaza. The Sonoma Coast, with its beaches and the dramatic stretch around Bodega Bay, is about forty-five minutes by car.