Bed and Breakfast & Picnic Rides

Tired of fighting the freeways, breathing dirty air, listening to the ear-splitting scream of sirens?

Jackpot.

You’re a candidate for a trip to the little hamlet of Geyserville, 73 miles north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, population 550 (give or take a cheerful soul or two).

Besides all the peacefulness, Geyserville is home for a couple of innkeepers, Rosalie and Bob Hope, who have come up with a new twist to the bed-and-breakfast scene. Together with Shellie and Dick Dilworth, they do picnics for romantics.

Not just ordinary picnics, mind you, but picnics featuring a team of strawberry roan draft horses and an old-time stagecoach in which guests of the Hopes’ two B&Bs; travel in grand style along back roads and through the vineyards of this gentle valley with its ranches, farmhouses and a scattering of sheep that appear like tufts of cotton caught in the folds of rolling hills.

Stage-A-Picnic is the latest idea for generating attention for wine tours of the Alexander Valley. At the same time, picnickers can pick up a snootful when Stage-A-Picnic does pit stops for guests with a crush on the grape. Sip a Chardonnay or a Zinfandel. Then it’s off to a table laden with the gourmet goodies of Rosalie Hope.

Out comes the crystal along with picnic baskets stuffed with artichoke salad, apple-cabbage cole slaw, knockwurst, Sonoma and weisswurst sausage, hot beer sausage, a pesto cheese, fresh-picked fruit, vegetables and a veal pudding sausage with apples, currants and pistachio nuts served with grilled onions. All this along with homemade chocolate cheesecake topped with garden-fresh strawberries.

The Dilworths arrive with their stagecoach to pick up guests precisely at 10 a.m. at Bob and Rosalie’s B&Bs.; When they aren’t on a picnic run, the Dilworths tend a 400-acre farm whose stables are home to eight magnificent strawberry roans, a couple of which (Chub and Red) appeared in the old TV series “Little House on the Prairie.” Another team once pulled the trolley at Disneyland.

It goes without saying that the Dilworths are heavily into horses. Particularly strawberry roans, which provide the horsepower for not one, but several old stages the Dilworths have picked up at auctions as far away as Texas.

On the picnic runs the stage fords creeks, rolls along country back roads and plows through vineyards whose leaves are scarlet with the melancholy moment of autumn.

Dick and Shellie’s Geyserville Stage Line is headquartered in a wonderful old red barn that’s surrounded by pastures and split-rail fences where ancient oaks spread their shade over hollyhocks and a garden profuse with other blooms.

During the 1800s, stages made regular runs to resorts near Geyserville, where city types soaked in steaming waters that boiled from natural springs. The focal point was the old Geysers Resort Hotel which, alas, went up not in steam but in smoke during a fire that left it a mere pile of ashes.

The revival of stage activity in Geyserville occurred when the Dilworths hitched up their teams to serve guests at a couple of imposing Victorians operated by the Hopes. It was a perfect partnership. The clincher is Rosalie Hope’s widely touted talents in the kitchen.

A former schoolteacher (and former secretary to Sen. Alan Cranston), Rosalie performs in the kitchen like Baryshnikov performs on stage. Her breakfasts are the talk of the B&B; circuit. The other morning she turned out a ham loaf containing ground pork, bread crumbs and tomatoes as well as ham. Other platters were piled with biscuits and creamed eggs in a Dijon Becagnel sauce, and there was a German plum cake with a shortbread crust that deserved a blue ribbon at the very least.

Guests who remain a week are served a different breakfast each day. Rosalie’s other menus feature coffeecake filled with dates and nuts and topped with sugar and cinnamon, this along with a chili egg-puff casserole with a mild salsa, scrambled eggs with cottage cheese and chives, fresh pear pie, a sausage roll in a puff pastry and French toast dripping with Drambuie.

Rosalie keeps a log on guests so that those who return discover new surprises at the breakfast table. Frequently a guest will call ahead to request a favorite dish.

Although Rosalie is strictly into the B&B; business, she will, in the case of a group or a family, prepare dinners as well.

The Hopes became innkeepers in 1974, first operating a B&B; on the Russian River. In 1979 they made the move to Geyserville, buying a couple of weather-beaten Victorians facing one another across Geyserville Avenue.

After renovating the Queen Anne-style Bosworth House, the Hopes tackled the abandoned Merrill House. It was hidden behind a tangle of blackberry vines, its window shades drawn so that it appeared for all the world like a haunted house. The old frame was so spooky that onlookers got the idea Dracula could be floating around inside.

These are not your run-of-the-mill B&Bs.; Rather they offer comfort without corrupting the feeling of returning to a peaceful period when America moved at a horse-and-buggy pace.

In the beginning the Hopes removed a false ceiling at Merrill House that had been installed to save heating fuel. After that, windows were replaced and guest rooms were renovated to give each a private bath. Clawfooted tubs and pedestal sinks were shipped from an old hotel in Illinois.

As a result, guest rooms at Merrill House are a trip back to another century, with one exception: The Peacock Room boasts a modern $3,000 whirlpool tub for two that was installed for the joy of honeymooners.

Otherwise, Merrill House functions as a museum-like Victorian that’s crowded with Rosalie’s antiques. Indeed, the Victorian Room features the Hopes’ own walnut-burl bed (value $5,000), along with an old chaise and pictures that hung when grandma was a girl.

The Hopes replumbed Merrill House, installed new electrical wiring, sandblasted and repainted. What sets it apart from other Victorians, though, is the museum-quality silk-screen wallpaper that was designed especially for this old pile.

In the process of renovation, a kitchen was transformed into a bedroom, walls were knocked out and baths were installed in wardrobe closets.

Outside, beneath the gazebo, guests sip wine from home-grown grapes. A swimming pool is surrounded by fig and walnut trees, and a persimmon tree provides fruit for home-baked persimmon bread.

With the renovation, the Hopes have pinned a $650,000 price tag on Merrill House. Without question, it is impressive. Guests are awed by its antiques--the Hoosier kitchen cabinet, its hutches and 19th-Century chaises, and a roll-top desk that the Hopes discovered in an assayer’s office in Tonopah, Nev.

From Sacramento to the Carolinas, the Hopes went on an antique-buying spree. On the other hand, it’s a trifle ludicrous to describe a rather ordinary set of wicker furniture, circa 1930, as an antique adornment.

Although Merrill House is the Hopes’ flagship, my choice is the less pretentious Bosworth House with its traditional country-style wallpaper, old-fashioned rockers, an oak-carved bed and love seat, shelves of books and a porch swing where guests gather of an evening to visit--or just gaze up at the stars.

Built entirely of redwood, Bosworth House offers accommodations in five rooms, three with private baths and two that share. The rooms are snug, with a down-home feeling that recalls a period before America was overgrown with cities and the empty land stretched entirely to infinity.

Bosworth House offers shelter in rooms named the Wicker, the Sun Porch, the Oaks, the Chintz and Birds-Eye Maple. For city dwellers, it’s a nostalgic trip, a brief interlude when the era of the atom seemed remote and unthreatening.

Roses climb a white picket fence that surrounds a garden crowded with hollyhocks, geraniums and honeysuckle. A grape arbor spreads shade and trees provide apples, pears and walnuts.

So what is there for the visitor in Geyserville after doing the picnic ride by stagecoach or watching a startling sunset? Not much, really. One may revisit the wineries. Or perhaps go canoeing on the Russian River. Or drive to the Bell Valley to visit Beverly Nesbitt at her charming Toll House Inn that she shares with a couple of mutts, Raley and No Name.

At Toll House Inn there is absolutely nothing to do other than soak in a hot tub or nap in a hammock beneath a wonderful old walnut tree. Or watch sheep grazing on a hillside. Or perhaps fill the soul with the serenity of a magnificent sunset.

At Toll House, shelter is offered in Mollie’s Room, Kathy’s Room, the Library and the Blue Room, which features a bath and its own fireplace.

Built as a ranch house, Toll House is one of those country hideaways that’s filled with the peace of an earlier era--as well as the cheer of its owner.

Nesbitt is an ex-surfer from Laguna Beach who sailed her own schooner to the South Seas only to discover on her return that she’d reached an age of contentment that called for settling in the country. It turned out that place was Boonville, which is about as far removed from the sophisticated life style of Laguna Beach that California has to offer.

A few miles away, Judy and Bill Hardardt provide shelter for the wayfarer at the Philo Pottery Inn on California 128 between Cloverdale and the Mendocino Coast. Built of redwood, the century-old inn served as a stagecoach stop before the turn of the century.

Few inns match its warmth, what with country furnishings, antiques, wood stoves and the lazy ticking of an old-fashioned clock. Baskets of books are scattered throughout the old two-story shelter and bowls of cookies and wild plums are there to plunder.

Outside, guests breathe the woodsy fragrance of the forest and listen while the wind whips through branches of redwoods, oaks, fir, cedarwood and madrone trees. No sirens, no crowds, no jangled nerves. Only the peace of a very special wilderness.

References:

--Stage-A-Picnic c/o Dilworth Geyserville Stage Line, P.O. Box 536, Geyserville, Calif. 95441; (707) 857-3619. (In addition to serving the inns, the Dilworths offer private stage rides/picnics. Price: $40.)

--Hope-Merrill House, 21253 Geyserville, Calif. 95441; (707) 857-3356. Rates: $75/$85.

--Hope-Bosworth House, 21238 Geyserville Ave., Geyserville, Calif. 95441; (707) 857-3356. Rates $60/$80.

--The Toll House, P.O. Box 268, Boonville, Calif. 95415; (707) 895-3630. Rates $60/$108.

--Philo Pottery Inn, 8550 Highway 128, Philo, Calif., 95466; (707) 895-3069. Rates $50/$70.