Why We Use Park City's Fall Break for Wine Country, Not the Beach

The PCSD fall break is criminally underrated

If you're new to Park City, here's the lay of the land: Park City School District has a quirk that other Wasatch districts don't. A full week off in October. (Weilenmann, where Charlie and Wyatt go, mirrors PCSD on the big breaks, with a few extra outdoor flex days sprinkled in because of course they do — more on that later.) It's the kind of break that lets you actually go somewhere without the airfare gouge of a holiday week.

My friends from Palo Alto don't have this. Their kids get a Friday off here, a teacher work day there, but no week. So they bank it all into Thanksgiving and spring and summer and feel guilty about it. We get an extra week. We get to be a little smug.

Why Napa, and not the obvious choice

I grew up in the Napa area. My family has had a vineyard there for three generations. My dad still walks the rows every morning in October like a man inspecting a small kingdom, which, fair. Sean (my husband, the Palo Alto-startup half of the family) jokes that the only reason I married him was because he could keep up with my dad on a Cab tasting, and honestly, the data supports it.

So when fall break rolls around, going home isn't a vacation. It's a return to the mothership. Sean works remote two of the days, my parents take the kids on a tractor ride through the back blocks, and I sit on the porch with my mom and a glass of something my dad pulled out of the cellar with no announcement.

What the trip actually looks like

We arrive Saturday afternoon. My mom has tomato bread waiting and the windows open. The kids drop their bags and immediately disappear toward the giant oak in the back — there's a tire swing my dad keeps re-rigging every season. Wyatt has gotten brave enough this year to climb to the second branch. Charlie scoffs because she made it to the third branch when she was his age. (Sibling currency.)

• Sunday: Tasting room day. My family's pourer, Marisol, has known me since I was twelve and lets the kids "taste" sparkling grape juice out of real glasses. My dad does his Cab demo for whoever's in the room — barrel sample, then current vintage, then his pet 2014 library bottle. He has done this exact monologue for twenty years and it still works on every guest.
• Monday: A long, lazy lunch at Bistro Don Giovanni. Wyatt orders the Margherita pizza every single time. Charlie has decided this year, at age nine, that she likes mussels. I ordered a 2018 Chablis with my mom and we got a little goofy in the late afternoon sun.
• Tuesday and Wednesday: Vineyard work days. Harvest is happening, so the kids "help" — meaning they get handed a small bucket and walk a row with my dad. Wyatt comes back purple-handed and proud. Charlie wants to know about Brix levels. (She's going to be a CFO. Not a winemaker. We've had the talk.)
• Thursday: A drive over to Sonoma to see one of my mom's oldest friends, who has horses. Wyatt rode for the first time last year and was, predictably, fearless. Charlie's a more cautious rider, which surprises everyone given her ski racing.
• Friday: Pack up. Cry a little in the driveway. My mom presses a paper bag of zucchini into my hands like I am incapable of buying my own at Whole Foods Park City. (I am not. But I take it.)

Why this beats Lake Tahoe (and yes, I have access)

My in-laws have a Tahoe house. It's where I learned to ski, actually, before Sean's parents owned it — my own parents had friends in Truckee and we were up there four or five winter weekends a year. So the option is always sitting there. Tahoe in October is gorgeous; the leaves turn, the lake is glass, the crowds are gone.

But here's the thing. We can do Tahoe. We do Tahoe. Every other PC family I know who has a Bay Area connection ALSO has a Tahoe option, and that's where most of them go for fall break. Which is exactly why I don't. Tahoe in October is pretty. Napa in October is alive. The difference is the harvest.

The Weilenmann bonus

I'm going to brag for one paragraph. Weilenmann sends the kids home with a one-pager before fall break that's not a homework packet — it's a list of "observation prompts." Things like: notice a tree changing. Notice an animal preparing for winter. Notice a sound you don't normally hear. Charlie came back last year with a half-page on the sound of a destemmer running in my dad's crush pad. Her teacher framed it. I cried in the carpool line.

This is the part Palo Alto private school doesn't do. The Bay Area schools my friends' kids go to — wonderful, rigorous, beautiful — would not say "go listen to a destemmer at your grandfather's vineyard for credit." Park City education is its own creature, and Weilenmann is the most Park City version of it.

Practical notes if you're stealing this idea

• Drive vs. fly: We drive. Reno airport is the cheat code if you must fly. SFO is a nightmare during fall break.
• Where to stay if you don't have parents in Napa: Solage in Calistoga is family-friendly. Carneros Resort has the kid pool. Don't book a downtown Napa hotel with small kids — the noise.
• Best kid-friendly tasting rooms: Frog's Leap, Honig, Ehlers Estate. Picnic-style, dogs on lawns, no judgment if your six-year-old is collecting acorns instead of inhaling Sauvignon Blanc aromas.

By the time we roll back into upper Park Meadows on Saturday night, the aspens up here have done their thing too, and the kids are exhausted in the very specific way of children who spent a week running on dirt instead of pavement. Sean uncorks something from the trunk — my dad always sneaks two bottles in — and we sit on the deck and watch our ridiculously over-scheduled lives wait politely for Monday morning. Park City fall break plus Napa harvest. The best week of the year, every year, and I'm not sorry about it.