The San Diego-based road trip flick, "Sideways," was somewhere in the back of my mind as Amy and I headed up the 5 toward the Central Coast area, with its small waterfront towns and gazillion wineries.

The plan was to find some quiet place, sip wine and mull life's meaning. Then, we'd drive the coast to Morro Bay, view "the rock," eat fresh ocean goodies, and maybe hop up to Hearst Castle.

Highest on our schedule were meandering afternoon walks and lazy sunsets. Here's how it went.

Wineries and more

The Santa Ynez Valley is a Sunday driver's dream. Quiet roads stretch through rolling hills laced with white-fenced horse farms and thousands of acres of grape vines. At times, the view opens to bright blue fields of lavender.

Several small villages bunched together in the valley are flush with hotels and restaurants. Solvang, Danish in architecture, food and traditions, is the most popular stay-over choice, and Los Olivos is a get-away-from-it-all haven. We followed the movie script and stayed in Buellton, a town of maybe 3,500 people.

Wine tasting is easiest in Solvang and Los Olivos. Because vineyards are spread throughout the valley, wineries conveniently locate their tasting rooms in these towns. Los Olivos, with high-facaded wood-framed shops, is right out of the Old West. You know you are in horse country when you see a beautifully groomed sorrel, of the kind usually seen in shows, pulling a tourist surrey.

Davy Crockett (aka Fess Parker) likes this place so much that he built his four-diamond Wine Country Inn smack-dab in the middle of town. Parker's inn is top-drawer for a stay-over and certainly not a bad place to eat: Its Vintage Room Restaurant has received the Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence for the last two years. Another restaurant regarded among the best in the valley is the Los Olivos Cafe. This is a particularly good place to try wine from small local wineries.

But the reason to visit Los Olivos goes beyond food and drink. The town is five miles from the freeway and a universe away from modern hubbub. Stroll down the main street, and you walk back years into simpler times. Not a soul is hurrying anywhere. The horse and buggy looks perfectly in place on the quiet main street. This is a place where you can leave the scurrying world behind without having to resort to a tent and Coleman.

Solvang is a bit more bustling. Amy went ga-ga over the shops: antique shops, curio shops, souvenir shops, pastry shops, shop shops ---- and what do you know, a new battalion of wine-tasting rooms. Thank heaven the tastes are small.

We were in Solvang on Wednesday ---- farmer's day ---- and purchased fresh-picked Satsumas and navel oranges at the street market. We visited the Lucas and Lewellen storefront and tasted a very nice petite syrah reserve. Then, we moseyed over to the Mandolina tasting room, and there in this Danish-inspired town, we sampled Italian wines and listened to Norma, with her lilting Irish accent, tell stories about her journey from Limerick to New York, then California. I think it was Norma who mentioned that there was an Indian casino five minutes down the road.

The evening

Wined and relaxed during the day, we found the Chumash Casino to be a nice evening wake-up. This large casino, with its four-diamond resort hotel, features 24/7 gambling on a 90,000-plus-square-foot gaming floor. There's free live music and, for the price of a ticket, some big-name entertainers. We chose to spend a pleasant few hours sliding quarters into video poker machines as we made our donation to the Chumash tribe.

Later in Buellton, we visited the Hitching Post II, the restaurant/wine bar locale that supplied many of the key scenes for "Sideways." We sat where star Paul Giamatti sat when he declined a modest proposal made by pretty Virginia Madsen. Stupid man.

Good conversation goes with good wine, and the Hitching Post II is the place for both. Restaurant owner Frank Ostini, barkeep that night, was a friendly and knowing guide as we wended our way through the wine list, then settled on a local varietal. The buzz about Central Coast pinot noir coaxed us to sample the fare. It was more than fare, it was very good. We tried the restaurant's own Hartley-Ostini wine, and my taste buds, geared to $8 a bottle stuff, were in vineyard heaven.

We asked Frank about the movie. He said a guy who used to visit the restaurant-bar announced he was writing a story, and the bar and a waitress were in it. The manuscript became a movie and the Hitching Post II became a film location. To prepare for her role as the waitress, Virginia Madsen would prowl the kitchen and serving area to learn the setup. Frank, true gentleman that he is, took her and co-star Sandra Oh for a tour of his winery. Later, he was invited to New York for the movie premiere. I've talked to bar owners before and never particularly envied their work, and then I met Frank Ostini.

Morro Bay and 'the rock'

Like many of the places we visited on this trip, Morro Bay is definitely not into 21st-century stuff, and that's what makes it charming. This is a town with a one-movie cinema and a small line out front for the afternoon show. We were drawn to the small shops and restaurants that rim the bay. Rose's Landing, overlooking the water, offered avocado egg rolls and a salmon burrito that we had to try. The wine here was a pleasing syrah from the Edna Valley Vineyard, about 15 miles up the road.

Food and drink came after we had strolled the downtown and harbor, seen the signs offering deep-sea fishing trips, and watched local commercial fishermen dock their boats. We'd also hiked along the foot of "the rock," Morro Rock, a giant half-egg mountain of stone that looks as if it were sprung full-blown from the mind of Dr. Seuss. Sitting dockside at Rose's, I kept looking out at this 576-foot-high piece of stone that looms over the harbor, wondering how it got there, whether it was for real, or whether it might be some alien, ready to lift up on crab legs and start moving toward me. About that time that I switched my drink from wine to iced tea.

Hearst Castle

Our nice hotelier made us early-morning reservations for Hearst Castle, giving us the freedom to spend most of the day there. If you live in this state and haven't been to the castle, go. If you have been, read "Citizen Hearst" by W.A. Swanberg, then go again. Just the final 20-minute ride from the sea-level visitor's center 1,600 feet up to the castle is worth the trip. The views of the ocean and mountains are unbelievable.

William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, spared no expense in building his castle. And "castle" is the right word, even though Hearst called it his "ranch." Ranch houses, from what I know, aren't usually 165-room, 90,000-square-foot edifices with indoor and outdoor swimming pools. For a ranch house, you don't usually import ancient Egyptian sculpture or ancient Greek vases or the finest Carrara marble for Greek-revival statuary or what seems like half of a medieval church to furnish the dining hall and billiard room.

Ranch houses don't have inlaid gold leaf on their ceilings, door frames, floors and everywhere else. And ranchers don't usually have their own private airport and 250,000 acres of land (50 miles of which were coastline) where imported elk, ostriches, zebras and who knows what else still roam. I could go on, but really, you have to see it.

This three-day road trip was to be our down time. We were counting on afternoon wine, leisurely walks and lingering sunsets. We got that and much, much more with time in the valley, time on the coast and time in an opulent castle. All we needed to do was go "Sideways" from San Diego.