Touring *

From U.S. 101 in Santa Rosa, continue north past Highway 12 (the Sebastapol Freeway) and take the Third Street exit at the Santa Rosa Plaza Mall. Turn right and you'll be on Third Street. Four blocks east, Third becomes Montgomery Drive, which you'll follow for 2.5 more miles. To park at Howarth Park, turn right onto Summerfield Road. The first left is the entrance to Howarth Park. It gets crowded here, but parking is free. (The trail description starts from the Spring Lake parking lot, described below.) To park at Spring Lake, continue on Montgomery another four miles through a densely forested area. The road will suddenly open up again near a newer neighborhood with the Spring Lake levee above on the right. Turn right at the Annadel Spring Lake Park signs. Turn right again on Voletti Street a short way down, and proceed to the Spring Lake Park entrance. There's a $3 fee per car to park here, but a swimming beach and showers make it worth it. Map: California State Automobile Association (AAA) North Bay Counties.

Rather than a day of wine tasting, why not enjoy Sonoma County the way many Santa Rosans do? Take a couple of laps on the bike path around Spring Lake on a warm summer morning, and then rinse off in the lake and laze around near your picnic table. Skating at Spring Lake is fun and full of variety, thanks to the curves that dip and rise around the lake's convoluted western edge, a straight, forthright border on the north, and a gently meandering southern shore. You'll share the trail with parents pushing strollers, street and mountain bikes, and a few other skaters. Because it does get so crowded, be careful with speed, and watch out for chance meetings around the blind curves. Starting in the clockwise direction from the Spring Lake parking lot (toward the south), the eight-foot-wide path is easy enough to follow, with a dividing line painted down the middle. Take the low road, ignoring the path leading to the upper road, which is gravel. Several yards after rounding the southwest corner of the lake, the trail disappears into a parking lot. Skate toward the west and up the slope. Turn right when you come to the top of the rise to follow the road north as it passes through a campsite, where the trail levels out. In the middle of the open area on the knoll, the trail resumes to the left. A side trail takes you to Howarth Park, which isn't much more than a parking lot from this trail's perspective, but it's worth it just to get some more pavement under your wheels. From the intersection with the Howarth Park side trail, the path continues north, up a hill, and across the top of a levee. Near the far end of the levee, drop down the slope of the levee wall to your right to continue the loop back around to the Spring Lake parking lot.