Napa: All the luxuries at half the price

Accomodations

While the two of us often frequent wine country, we usually go to Sonoma, do not go in the summer and do not stay over night. I was in for a rude awakening when I saw that even the most basic motel-esque accomodations in Napa were over $300/night at this time of year. Any hotel that had the level of service that I typically find worth a splurge was in the $800+ range. And the sky is the limit for that “+”.  When I think of hotel cost, I’m willing to spend up to $200/night for “basic” accomodations depending on the local market conditions. My husband would argue that my definition of “basic” is actually luxury, but I’m talking about the type of service you get in a Sheraton or Courtyard Marriott meeting “basic”.  Sorry honey, no more Motel 6’s with me in tow. I am only willing to spend more than that if we are absolutely desperate (i.e. attending a wedding in the middle of nowhere and the only options are a $300/night Holiday Inn or sleeping in the car) or if I think the price is reflective of the added services and luxury I will receive. Given that Calistoga is not in the middle of nowhere, and the $400/night options felt like dark motel rooms to me, it was time to get creative!

That is when I discovered Bothe-Napa State Park and their newly built collection of 10 yurts. Located 3 miles south of Calistoga, on HWY 128, the State Park has a series of hikes and trails, several campgrounds, a few cabins, and 10 yurts. For $70/night, we reserved a clean, simple yurt consisting of a queen bed and mattress (bring your own sheets), two folding cots, a desk and a locking door. Outside the yurt we had our own parking space, a picnic table and a metal fire stove/pit.

I was very impressed with the cleanliness of the yurt, it even still had a fresh wood smell. Only downside was that there is no plumbing, so yes, you need to use a port-o-john. The bathroom was surprisingly not terrible, it was clear that the park cleans it often and uses a very effective odor eliminator. A live-in camp ground keeper lives next to Yurt #7 and is there to sell you firewood at $8/bundle and answer any questions you may have 24/7.

Food and Wine

Napa is notorious for having amazing food at amazingly high prices and amazingly hard to get reservations. The good thing about having such stiff foodie competition is that even the little guys need to perform. Our strategy was to hit up a fancy meal at lunch time, when the prices are slightly cheaper and there is no problem getting a reservation. For dinner, we got gourmet, “prepared” food and wine from the local grocery to enjoy on our private picnic table.

Using our fire pit, we successfully grilled pineapple pork sausages and a cornmeal crusted mushroom pizza; we finished with S’mores (made with Ghirardelli chocolate) for dessert! Oh, one last issue with the yurt was that apparently August in Napa is bee season, it would have been challenging to eat lunch in the park, but once the sun went down, the bees went to sleep.

There was no substitute for morning coffee so we hit up coffee places in downtown Calistoga. On Saturday morning we were very impressed by the friendliness of the staff at Yo el Rey and the tastiness of the coffee! We definitely recommend them to anyone looking for quality espresso or drip coffee made with great care!

Activities

A spa treatment is a splurge, no way around it. One can usually draw a pretty clear correlation between cost of service and value/luxury when it comes to spa treatments. So, no big-time savings in this category. I simply did research to determine which spa would have the best mud bath experience. That is what you are supposed to do in Calistoga right? Sit in mud? Thanks to TripAdvisor and Yelp, my usual, go-to, on the run sources, Indian Springs Resort popped to the top.

For $85 each, my husband and I got the mud bath experience. I was very happy with the service at Indian Springs. They thought of everything, down to the fresh hair tie waiting in my personal locker. The treatment begins with a 12-minute soak in a vat of mud in their gender split bathhouse. I loved the feel of the bathhouse, it looked as if it was the same structure and architecture from the early 1900’s. After the 12-minute semi-buried alive experience, you rinse off and then sink into a 15-minute mineral bath. While in the bath, the staff provides you with a pick to clean the mud out from under your fingernails and refreshing cucumber water. Once you are finished soaking, you are escorted into a eucalyptus steam room and given a cool towel for your face. The steam is intense and after 5-10 minutes you enter the final stage of your treatment: a comfy towel wrap on top of a soft massage table where you cool down and drift off to bliss with cucumbers and a cool towel over your eyes.

There is an option to get a day pass for the mineral pools at the resort but we didn’t have the full day to spend at the spa. In the future I’d like to try the spa at the Solage, which is priced similarly but typically requires making a reservation well in advance.

In terms of wine tasting, we stopped by a couple of wineries in Napa on Saturday but when Sunday rolled around we bee-lined it over to Sonoma where the tasting rooms are more intimate/casual and the prices more reasonable.

Wrap Up

The weekend overall was relatively easy on the pocket book and very memorable! Did I mention that the Yurt turned out to be the safest place to be during the 6.1 earthquake we experienced that weekend? And with all being said and done, I can’t wait to start planning our future $1,300/night getaway to Calistoga Ranch…but until then, see the table below for a summary of this Napa weekend at half the cost!