By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor
My family never did the reunion thing, and I sort of feel like I got gypped. I always envy the families who all get together for weeks on end of days at the beach, big group dinners al fresco, parents lounging by the bonfire with cocktails in hand while the kids tromp around content to be with their cousins. I barely even knew who my cousins were, let alone spent frivolous weeks away with them.
Now that I have my own kids, not to mention 13 neices and nephews, I'm dying to plan a reunion someday. The good news is that I recently stumbled upon the absolute perfect place to do it.
Westerbeke Ranch, in Sonoma Valley, minutes from dowtown Sonoma, is a rustic, family-run retreat that bills itself as a conference center but welcomes groups of any kind: 16 people minimum on weekdays, 21 people minimum weekends, 52 people total. Rates are on a sliding scale (cheapest for bigger groups), starting at $141 per person per night, including THREE meals a day! The food is supposedly excellent, featuring produce grown on the grounds, and the ranch kitchen is very inviting, with al fresco seating by a pool. Just think of all the money you save not eating out. And you don’t even have to cook, let alone walk more than 10 paces from your cabin.
The five redwood cabins have single beds only, but they’re plenty comfy in a summer-camp way, with country-style furnishings and porch swings outside. The place exudes summertime laziness, which might explain why I snoozed the whole afternoon away in one of those cabins recently.
I felt like I was entering the Sunset Magazine headquarters as I walked around the Spanish Mission–style property with its lushly landscaped gardens, oak-dotted hillsides, adobe buildings with Taco Bell–syle roofs, even a few cacti here and there. It’s an appropriate likeness, since the ranch is steeped in western heritage, having been built by a western couple in 1935 and occupied by four different generations of that same family since then.
Members of the family still live on the grounds, tending their vegetable gardens, driving cool old trucks around dirt roads, and living the western life we all like to dream of living someday. The same family also owns the very lovely looking El Rito Canyon Retreat in northern New Mexico; Oak Hill Farm in Sonoma County’s Mayacamas Mountains, which sells its produce and flowers at the San Francisco Ferry Builing Ferry Farmers Market; and Bucklin Winery, which produces an excellent zinfandel.
Like I said, I wish I had that kind of family. But at least the rest of us can go stay at the ranch, eat the produce, drink the wine, and dream.
