After you explore and photograph the wine country, allow at least a day to visit Safari West, located just north of Santa Rosa, California, and several miles southwest of Calistoga, off Mark West Springs Road at Porter Creek Road. At Safari West, you can easily fill several days photographing hundreds of African, South American, and Asian animals roaming 480 acres of a wooded, private preserve. Giraffes graze in wide-open paddocks, and African spoonbills preen their feathers. The facilities are designed to allow close-up photography of exotic birds—East African crowned crane, ostrich, griffon vultures, saurus crane, and the scarlet Ibis. To see and photograph the animals roaming the savannah environment, sign on for one of the guided Safari Truck tours. These tours use four-wheel-drive safari vehicles to take small groups into the hills of the preserve and operate on a regular schedule throughout the year: three times a day in summer season, two times a day in winter season. Their Jeeps allow great photo access to the exotic and endangered wildlife—African Cape buffalo, springboks, eland, zebra, scimitar horned Oryx, addax, red lechwe, and blue wildebeest. If you plan to fly into the area, check out the flights into Sacramento International Airport. The drive to Napa in the wine country from Sacramento is about the same distance as from San Francisco International Airport, but you won’t have to drive through The City.
You can find more information on California Wine Country in Issue #106 Page 11 of Photograph America Newsletter. Comments are closed.
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BlogNotes and images from Bob Hitchman. Archives
October 2024
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