Heat up
Get your soak on in Calistoga.

By Mat Honan

CITY LIFE CAN be, at times, stressful. For example, let's say you're walking home late at night with a pocketful of It's-It ice-cream sandwiches (a San Francisco tradition since 1928) and a doggy treat when you're set upon by brigands brandishing pistols who train a gun on your wife and demand your wallet. Who frog-march you like Karl Rove downhill toward Divisadero Street, forcing you to empty your pockets of said doggy treat and It's-It bars, leaving the latter lonely and melting on the Page Street pavement. This robbery, occurring as it did just outside my front door, left me feeling the need to get the hell out of town. I needed to relax. To unwind and allow myself to be pampered. But we don't have a lot of money. So we headed to Calistoga, in Napa County, where you can break away from it all without breaking the bank.

When I first moved to the Bay Area, I imagined the wine country as a sophisticated epicure, a Californian Catherine Deneuve. Instead, I discovered Napa is a fortysomething, refrigerated-goods salesman with a mullet, half drunk and hauling ass down the shoulder of Highway 29 behind the wheel of a maroon PT Cruiser. A Middle American. But drive 27 miles beyond Napa – past Yountville and St. Helena, where the crowds and the Cruisers thin out – until you come to Calistoga, a town better known for its water than for its wine.

After finding ourselves unexpectedly relieved of our money on Page Street, my wife and I booked a room at Golden Haven Hot Springs Spa and Resort (1713 Lake, 707-942-6793), one of the best values for lodging in all of California. The hotel offers incredible deals over the Web (www.goldenhaven.com). If you're really on top of things, you can snag a room with a queen-size bed and a mineral-water shower for around $40 a night. Although you shouldn't expect the Four Seasons for that kind of price, even the cheapest rooms are comfortable, clean, and spacious enough that we could stow both of our bikes inside without having to stumble over them. Standard and high-season rates range from $85 a night for the aforementioned room to $185 a night for a deluxe room with a king-size bed and Jacuzzi spa.

The next morning we were up early and out on our bikes to beat the traffic and tour the countryside. The roads around Calistoga are wonderful for cycling; you'll find sharply rising wooded hills and shady vistas to the west and long, flat, open stretches in the sun tracing for miles through the vineyards in the valley. From Tubbs Road you can watch Calistoga's Old Faithful geyser erupt high into the air every half hour (although it costs $8 a person to watch it do so from within the fence). If you're up to a longer ride, it's a 25-mile journey along CA-128 through gorgeous winding roads and hills to Geyserville in Sonoma County, where you can pick up a deli lunch before heading back.

Most of the wineries in and around Napa seem to be corporate-run enterprises these days. Family-owned places are hard to find, or were for us, while free-tasting rooms are even less common. Happily, however, we found both at Frank Family Vineyards (1091 Larkmead Lane, 1-800-574-9463). We spent our afternoon relaxing in the casual tasting atmosphere, sipping champagnes and zinfandels and bitching about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But it's not the wine that makes Calistoga special. It's the water and, less so, the ash. The natural geothermal hot springs have been drawing visitors since 1862, when Sam Brannan opened the first resort. Today, Calistoga is teeming with places to get your soak on. You can still go to Indian Springs Spa (1212 Lincoln, 707-942-4913), on the site of Brannan's original one. Dr. Wilkinson's Resort (507 Lincoln, 707-942-4102) is the oldest family-owned spa in town and also probably the best known. Virtually any spa treatment one could imagine is available in Calistoga. But combine the hot mineral water with the indigenous volcanic ash and you've got yourself a Calistoga mud bath, my friend.

Thanks to the Internet specials, we also booked a spa treatment at Golden Haven, and in the early afternoon, we lowered our naked bodies into vats of piping hot mud, attempting to draw out the poisons of wine, the tensions of exercise, and the memories of being mugged. I couldn't begin to tell you if the mud genuinely has healing properties or not. I suspect the latter. But damn does it feel like a million bucks. I came out of the mud feeling cleansed and dirty all at once (be warned: mud clings tenaciously to body hair). We followed up with a dip in a mineral water whirlpool, a hot towel wrap, and, finally, a mineral water shower.

Driving home, my wife looked at me and said, "I'm going to be OK now when we get back."

Mat Honan is a writer and blogger who lives in San Francisco.