Santa Rosa, CA

Santa Rosa is the capital of Sonoma wine country, the largest city of California's North Bay — and the home of two beloved cultivators, one of plants and one of children's souls. Luther Burbank chose Santa Rosa as "the chosen spot of all this earth as far as Nature is concerned" and spent fifty years in his gardens here breeding eight hundred new varieties — the Shasta daisy, the Santa Rosa plum, the russet potato that feeds continents; his home and gardens are preserved downtown. And Charles M. Schulz drew Peanuts in Santa Rosa for decades: the Schulz Museum holds the world of Charlie Brown, and the cartoonist's beloved ice arena, "Snoopy's Home Ice", still rents skates next door — bronze Peanuts characters greet visitors across the city.

Around them spreads the wine capital's daily pleasure: tasting rooms and farm-to-table kitchens in the restored Railroad Square, hundreds of wineries within half an hour, redwoods at Armstrong Grove and the Sonoma Coast beyond. The city has known trials — earthquake in 1906, fire in 2017 — and rebuilt each time with Burbank's own patience. Concert life proceeds in its churches, its Green Music Center nearby and its historic halls. Vines, daisies and a beagle on a doghouse: Santa Rosa's harvest is unusually kind.