My wife hates it with the narrow road, curves, and up and down the hills between 101 and Calistoga. I have driven it so many times that even in a Bronco we are moving right along.
Our favorite day trip is to drive over to Bodega Bay, walk around the head and then find some great Calamari for lunch. Then drive up to Jenner and a little north. During steelhead/salmon season, my wife will drop me off at Casini's ranch go do some shopping and come back. We take a cooler to carry back the fresh salmon, rock fish or D. Crabs that we buy right on the piers many times.
For two or three day trips we go to Bodega and do the same and then drive up to Gualala for a couple of nights. There are a couple of really great restaurants there. Then up the road is a great seafood restaurant at the foot of a pier. There is a seafood company and they bring the food right to the restaurant. We have seen the chefs go down to the pier and meet the boats and bring back dinner.
I called the sea food place that sells the Copper River Salmon, and they said that they didn't have it yet. There is a new sea food store opening in Napa, and they may have gotten the rights to the fish. Thanks for the heads up.
Napa is a great place to live except for all of the liberals.
And we also go down there, because our older son is buried down that way...He is buried at Cuffeys Cove Cemetary, just north of Elk...
Then of course, we love to visit Ft. Bragg, Mendocino, and take RTE 1 all the way north to where it crosses over to RTE101, and then a wonderful drive through the Avenue of the Giants...Those magnificent Redwood Trees are something else to see...
And then we continue up 101 all the way back up to Astoria, Oregon, where we cross over to I5, and then back to Olympia...
When making the trip down to Ukiah, we usually go down I5 because we like going through the Mtns. in Oregon, and of course, need to see Mt. Shasta...