Northern California

“The landscape of monotony is elsewhere,” Jack Newcombe writes, and the routes he traces through the vineyards, towns, and parkland of northern California—along with the variegated pleasures to be explored en route—bear the proof:

• Mud baths and wine tasting in Calistoga
• A view from the top at Mt. St. Helena
• Wine touring, the slow and selective way, in the Napa and Sonoma valleys
• “A Beer Ex...