I’m telling you, folks, love road courses or not, there ain’t a better road trip on this series than Sonoma. Between wine country, San Francisco, and the spectacular topography of Marin County, there’s a ton or stuff to do and see. The only negative is, well, the fact that you have to spend so much time at the racetrack. But you get around that by coming in a day early or leaving a day late. Trust me, it’s worth it.

I took advantage of the early Saturday practices and late sunset to ramble along the coastline, going all the way out to the lighthouse on the Point Reyes peninsula. It was fantastic - heathery, wheat-colored grass, craggy cliffs, the ocean pounding below. Don’t go in the water - several great white shark attacks have been recorded, according to one sign. But that’s not the biggest menace in the area. No, that one is underground.

Point Reyes, more specifically the bay that separates most of the peninsula from the rest of the mainland, is where the San Andreas Fault comes ashore. There’s a seismgraph in the visitor’s center, and the little needle twitches all the time. There’s a trail with blue posts marking the fault line, and a fence that was broken apart and the pieces separated 20 feet by the notorious 1906 quake. The scariest thing is a map of the Bay Area showing the ground consistency, and the types of damage that can occur during an earthquake. Red on the map indicates fill land, which turns to jello once the ground starts shaking, with buildings suffering heavy damage as a result. Most of the map is red. Gulp.

From there it was the drive down to the city, along curvy Highway 1, past pretty but crowded Stinson Beach and through what smelled like groves of eucalyptus trees, over the Golden Gate Bridge ($5 toll!) and to the sunny San Francisco waterfront. Sorry, but you just can’t do that in Martinsville or Darlington.

Of course, there can be pitfalls. Last year the fiance (now wife) came with me and we spent a day driving down the coast all the way to Pebble Beach. At dinner at a pretty sidewalk cafe in Carmel, we ordered the calamari appetizer. Big mistake. I thought it tasted a little strange - but then, I’m an East Coaster, and a lot of seafood out here seems different from what we get back home. Not this time. Thirty minutes into the drive back to San Francisco, we turn around and start looking for an emergency room. We find one called CHOMP - Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. After several bags of IV fluids, it’s 1 a.m. before we head back again. Let’s just say driving over the Santa Cruz mountains while tired and on meds for food poisoning isn’t recommended in the guidebook.

So no calamari on this trip. But those bay scallops sure do look interesting ….....