the wine country is all over northern Ca., the Sonoma and Napa  Valley's  being the most famous, they live next door to each other, Hiway 12 for sonoma and hiway 29-128 for Napa, they run parallel to each other so if you leave sonoma heading N. through the wine country for 18-20 mi.s take a right on Calistoga Rd, climb a couple two lane windy hills and drop down into Napa Cty to a stop sign, thats hiway 29-128, go south through the napa wine country and return to sonoma from the south, one big loop, gridlock never seen it but traffic can get slow 35-45, what most tourist don't know that on the napa side is a real nice two lane road called  Silverado Trail with swoopy turns and fairly long straights that runs parallel with 29-128 bout 1 mile or so east, speed limit is 55 and radar protected, check out Wilkinsons Hot Springs and within a block the Hideaway in Calistoga, both owned and operated by the Wilkinson's since 1952,  the Hideaway is my favorite, they do Corperate ans group stuff and I know the people well, ask for Carolynn, but regardless theres more to see than just the  the wine country.

|UPDATED|6/19/2012 12:57:54 PM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

Well,  I would suggest Colorado, specifically Colorado Springs or Woodland Park.  Lots of drive areas that are fun and engaging.  Now we have Bondurant at the International Raceway for a fun halfmile oval to drive on.  There is the drive up Pikes Peak on pavement, average travel time for the racers -- 12 minutes.  There is a castle under construction with fire breathing dragons in the mountains south of Colorado Springs.  Clive Cussler has his auto museum in Denver with cars that he has written into his books.  Much fun place, excellent for beautiful drives and country.  There are several trains in the area, river rafting and of course for this year the special forest fires galore.

Sounds like we have a number of good suggestions:

• Tacoma, WA / Northwest
• Sonoma / CA Wine Country
• LA area / Big Bear
• Utah / Bryce / Zion Canyons
• Flagstaff, AZ / Grand Canyon
• Woodland, CO

When do we condense the locations and vote?  The more important questions are - When do we leave?  and

ARE WE THERE YET???!!

I replied but got booted......no time to rewrite....

I think you got a good list and we need a new thread with a survey.  Plus one extra line "somewhere else/ keep looking"

Let's leave this suggestion thread open until 6/30, then I'll compile the list and post a survey.

for Sonoma its from end of June to end Sept, best July- Aug 

Are we there yet?? 

Add Sedona to the Flagstaff area it is 1 hour south nice curvy road.  Great place to take pictures lots of shops for the ladies. 

Look it up on Google earth to get an idea of the country.  

If you are doing Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon you need to be there before schools let out.  The same times apply for Sedona.  It gets crowded if you do go when school is out and the weather gets hot (it is a dry heat like your oven).  I would say late May early June. You could go as early as April-May but that is most likely to early for most people.  

If you did Flagstaff as a center you could go north 2hrs to the Grand Canyon or south 1 hr to Sedona.  Or you can stay and shop in Flagstaff there is a great leather goods store (10 years ago)  and a few place close in that are nice to visit.  

Same months apply to southern Utah but it would not be as warm.   You could also do the North rim of the Grand Canyon which is my favorite side of the big ditch.

When it comes time for voting I would recommend that you check out Google earth for some samples of the area.  

Because there are not a lot of us that live in the areas that we are recommending could I recommend that the voting be in two parts one to choose the top three spots.  Then give people a couple of weeks to provide what they like about those and then do the final voting.

I know that would help me in the final choice.