-I'm in a destination that is easily considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world, a place of immense natural beauty that helps create a wealth of food and drink.

In fact, it's so synonymous with the two that one of its exclamation points gets somewhat overlooked -- a jaw-dropping coastline.

But this phenomenal coast is amongst many surprises and total unknowns that make up this very well-traveled destination.

Ah.

It's a place you thought you knew.

-I'm in Sonoma County, California.

♪♪ I'm Samantha Brown, and I've traveled all over this world.

And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

♪♪ Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... ♪♪ -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path... on storied rivers... with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer -- proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

♪♪ -You know, driving along the coast here, it is just impossible to choose where you turn off and finally spend some time, but you told me to meet you here at Schoolhouse Beach.

-Right.

-What's special about this stop?

-All this right here, this coast.

It's really spectacular.

I'm Margaret Lindgren, and I'm originally from Rhode Island, New England, and I moved to Sonoma County in 2007, and the moment I came here, I knew I was staying here.

What I do is I take my passion and I share experience of place through that passion for those who are visiting here for the first time, and I give them the building blocks for the rest of their itinerary.

Spring, of course, is, you know, feeding and breeding season.

The whole coast is just alive with life.

These offshore rocks -- that's protected wildlife habitat.

So lots of migratory birds are gonna be nesting along these rocks.

We have seals and sea lions that will also haul out, so this whole region is really vital to the overall health of the entire ecosystems of the coast and the food web.

-And being spring, it's also the time and place of the greatest mammal migration in the world.

-So, there's a whale just spouting off right out there, and there -- There.

You just found it.

Yeah!

-I see him!

I see him!

Oh, my gosh.

I see -- -Ah, you got a little piece of it.

That's great.

♪♪ -What strikes me about the California coast is just the massive drama of it all.

It's like, "Okay."

-Right.

-[ Laughs ] I mean, it's just -- -Eyes on the ocean.

-Everything is just, "Wow.

Big."

Right?

-Yeah.

We are walking on the Pacific Plate, and our beautiful ridgeline, just inland, on the other side of that, is the North American Plate, which is what we're on when we're on the East Coast.

So it's all this beautiful sandstone... -Wow.

-...mixed with some serpentine.

It's what gives us these really awesome, I believe... -It's so true.

-...beaches.

-I mean, because when we were up there on the cliff, Margaret, I thought this was sand.

-Right?

-Now, look at this.

They are just billions of... -Little, baby superheated yummy rocks.

-Ohh.

They are gorgeous.

-A cacophony of what this entire coastal geologic region is.

[ Ominous music plays ] -Right now I am surrounded by the largest collection of carnivorous plants in the world.

-Carnivorous plants grow on every continent except for Antarctica.

-Do they only eat insects?

-No.

[ Dramatic chord strikes ] [ Whimsical music plays ] ♪♪ So, the first plant we're gonna talk about today are actually the Venus flytraps, and most people know about Venus flytraps, but people are usually surprised as to where they come from.

Do you want to hazard a guess where they come from in the wild?

-Oh, definitely somewhere tropical.

-No.

Actually, they come from North Carolina, only a 100-mile radius around Charlotte, North Carolina.

-It's an American carnivorous plant?

-It's an American carnivorous plant, and that's the only place in the world that they grow -- in the swamps and bogs.

Do you want to see one eat?

-Yes, definitely.

-I think we have to see one eat.

-Venus flytraps don't just eat flies, but what they do eat has to be alive.

Today, mealworms are on the menu.

-Don't blink.

-Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

-They can be a little faster than that, too.

We'll try a couple more.

Let's do that one right there.

-Whoa!

-That one was pretty fast, right?

-Whoa!

And that's a big mouth!

-Yeah.

-Is that what you call it -- a mouth?

-Yeah, well, it's a trap.

-It's a trap.

-Well, "mouth" works.

Yeah, exactly.

-How often do they have to eat?

-Usually, if they eat like once a week, that's plenty for them.

My very first plant was this sticky sundew.

-Okay.

-And it's this one right here.

This was the very first plant that I got when I was 11 years old that changed my life and got me into these plants.

-So this is the plant?

-That's the exact same one!

Yeah, I've been keeping it around for all these years -- 30 years now.

-Wow!

-I know.

-That's beautiful.

-I know.

-So, what made you fascinated with this plant?

-It's like -- I was really interested in animals, but then I never really realized that plants could do a lot of interesting things, too.

All these little hairs.

See how sparkly they are?

-Wow.

-Yeah.

It's actually a sticky glue, but if you're a little fly, it very quickly tangles up their legs and wings.

So, when I started to look at them, I realized how interesting plants were, and now I'm insanely biased towards plants, right?

-[ Laughs ] -Animals kind of bore me now, honestly.

-I think what I was most fascinated with is pitcher plants.

-Yeah, there's 170 different species of tropical pitcher plants.

This one that we're gonna to learn about, it has a little bit different way of making its living.

The lower pitchers look like this, and they're for catching bugs.

For the first 10 to 15 years, they'll only make pitchers like that.

-Okay.

-But then when they get a little bit of vine on them, like this one here, they start to make pitchers that look like this.

The kind of immediate thing you'll probably notice is that stuff.

-Yeah.

-What's that stuff?

-Yeah.

-And it turns out that there's tree shrews that come to eat that stuff.

-What's a tree shrew?

-A tree shrew is like a rat that lives in the trees in Borneo where these grow.

-Mm-hmm.

-And so they'll come to see that stuff.

It's kind of like coconut oil.

It's kind of dimly sweet and fatty.

-Ooh.

Mm-hmm.

-And so it's a reward for the shrew, and, so, as they eat, they almost always poop into the pitcher.

Now, that's kind of gross, but poop -- Most plants eat poop, actually.

That's how most plants make their living.

-Fertilizer.

-Exactly.

-Fertilizer is poop.

-Exactly.

And so instead of trapping bugs, this one lets the shrew do all the running around to catch things, and then as it visits and eats that stuff, it poops into the pitcher, and that's where it gets all of its fertilizer from.

-Pitcher plants can grow so large that they can catch mammals as large as rats, and one of Damon's plants caught a mouse a few weeks ago.

-Are we doing it?

♪♪ Well, there's some hair.

I don't know if it's gonna come out in one piece.

♪♪ No, it's not.

-Oh, my gosh!

What do you think that is?

-There's some little bones.

-Oh, God!

[ Chuckles ] Oh!

It is a bone.

-That's a little bone for sure.

So, it's already been broken down quite a bit.

-And some hair, too.

-And some hair too.

-Wow.

-Plants -- not just pretty flowers in your garden anymore.

-No.

These bite back.

-Yeah, they do.

♪♪ Learning how fascinating carnivorous plants are actually gives you an overall respect for all plants, especially the ones that don't bite.

Right now we're walking through an orchard that your parents planted.

-Yes.

-How many years ago?

-30 years ago.

-Oh, my gosh.

Were you even born yet?

-Not yet.

-[ Laughs ] So you grew up as these trees grew up?

-Yes.

My name is Jolie Devoto-Wade, and I am a fifth-generation Californian and second-generation apple farmer in Sonoma County.

-What makes Sonoma a great place to grow apples?

-The maritime climate and the Goldridge loam that we're standing on, the soil.

-The landscape couldn't be more spectacular.

-Yes.

-We're at the top of the hill overlooking a beautiful valley.

-Mm-hmm.

-You see the wine grapes, the vines below, and these apples stand at the top of the hill.

Does that give them a terroir as we talk about when we talk about grapes?

-Absolutely.

-It's different than, like, at the bottom of the hill?

-Absolutely.

And it's a very sandy, um, uh, loamy soil, and it drains very, very well, and it's acidic.

And the apple trees love it.

The grape vines love it.

But it's that plus the maritime climate.

-Your parents, for over 40 years, then, have grown apples and sold apples.

That's their business.

But you do something that your parents never even thought of with apples, right?

-That's right.

My husband and I make cider, and we made cider because we were driving around Sonoma County looking at all of the apple trees that had been cut down and converted into vineyards, and that was heartbreaking.

-They are now making award-winning ciders and will soon be opening a tasting room in nearby Sebastopol.

Oh.

Their cider Save the Gravenstein is one of Jolie's favorites.

Why do we need to save the Gravenstein?

-Because it's an endangered apple variety.

In the 1940s, there were about 15,000 acres of Gravensteins grown in Sonoma County, and now we're seeing less than 2,000 acres.

-What's this one?

-It's Fool's Gold.

And it's a blend of 20-plus heirloom golden varieties.

-A little cloudier here.

Fool's Gold has a layering of fruit and a full-body taste that is also super smooth.

Wow.

But, now, why do you need 20 different varieties of apples to go into one glass?

-Because we wanted to capture this orchard during a specific snapshot of time, and that's what's in your glass.

-So this...is this.

-Yes.

♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] -In Sonoma County, Africa is a lot closer than you think... ♪♪ ...thanks to the astonishing efforts of Nancy Lang and her husband, Peter, two people who have made it their life's work to educate and inspire conservationism for another continent's majestic animals.

Why Africa?

-We had traveled to Africa so much.

-Mm-hmm.

-And we were both enamored with Africa and the African wildlife.

-To be able to connect people with a continent that feels so far away must give you tremendous pleasure.

-It does, and people that come here thoroughly enjoy it.

They learn so much.

They become passionate about it, too.

-Mm-hmm.

-And they become passionate about the problems with animals both here in the U.S. and beyond.

-When you have 400 acres and close to 1,000 animals... -Mm-hmm.

-...how did you build it to this?

-My husband started breeding in the '70s... -Mm-hmm.

-...at the request of the directors of Fresno and Los Angeles Zoo, so we've been propagating ever since.

-And your background is that you have a doctorate in...?

-In biology.

-What is your greatest satisfaction?

-I've seen so many young people go into conservation, wildlife biology.

We have several veterinarians who started here as children.

So it's exciting for us.

It's very rewarding.

-With 98 different species, a total thrill is getting out into the rolling acres of Sonoma's own Serengeti.

It's not this experience where I'm standing in front of a fenced-in area, and there they are in, like, a half an acre.

-We're in the cage, and this is their habitat.

This is their home.

-You quite literally have a little slice of Africa here.

-That was the whole idea.

-Aside from the classic safari and conservation programs, a safari tent camp allows you to stay the night, listening to the sounds of the animals.

And imagine waking up to this beautiful fella.

♪♪ -So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna meet our rhino, Waldy.

-From afar?

Or does he come close?

-He's actually gonna come up close to us.

So, he seems to really enjoy interaction with people.

-Okay.

-But unlike a horse, he does have the large horn on his face.

-Yeah.

-So we always make sure that horn is in a position that's not going to cause harm.

-Oh, my gosh.

-Good boy.

Steep hill.

-Following you like a pet dog.

-Good job!

Come on.

-I'm being very mindful of that horn.

-Good boy!

-Ohh!

-So, we'll step back this way.

-Oh, yeah.

Sure, sure, sure.

-If you want to reach out and pet him, that will be his reinforcement for coming over and saying hello to us.

-Oh, my gosh.

-Rhinos have extremely thick skin.

It keeps them really well-protected.

-[ Gasps ] -I know.

Yeah.

He wants his food, so... ♪♪ So, Waldy is one of our ambassador animals here, which essentially means that he's here to inspire others to protect his species.

So he's in captivity so that people can meet a rhino up close and personal, learn how amazing this animal is, and hopefully go out and then help protect them in the wild.

-Do we know how many white rhinos are left?

-Somewhere around 15,000 individuals.

The Javan rhino -- there's actually thought to be less than 60 individuals left in the wild, and there are none in captivity.

There's quite a large number of rhinos that are lost to poaching every single year because of that horn.

It's actually worth more than gold per pound, so it's thought to be -- have medicinal value, potentially be an aphrodisiac, a cancer cure.

It's actually made out of keratin, so the same stuff our fingernails are made out of.

-Mm-hmm.

-So, unfortunately, it does not have any actual value.

-It is amazing to be this close to a rhinoceros.

-So, with all of our animals, when we do any kind of interaction, it's always their choice to participate, and 99% of the time, he wants to be part of that interaction.

♪♪ -Another wonderful unknown about Sonoma County is that it was home to a man who made so many people laugh, and it's here in Santa Rosa where you can visit some of your dearest childhood friends.

-I'm Jean Schulz, the widow of Charles Schulz.

I call him Sparky.

Everyone who knew him well called him Sparky.

And Sparky drew the "Peanuts" comic strip for 50 years.

♪♪ -This is amazing to me, standing in front of Charles M. Schulz's actual work.

-Well, and to see the actual line work... -The marker, right?

-You know, the lines of this hair and the lines of the grass and all of the things in the comic strip.

-So, when he drew, he always drew on a piece of paper this large?

-For Sundays.

-For Sunday.

And that's the dailies.

-And this is the dailies.

This is the dailies.

And this is Sunday.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

The museum opened in 2002, and its mission is to show the original comic strips of Charles M. Schulz but to show them in a context that shows how he got his ideas, how he worked with his ideas and how he brought other -- everything that he brought into the comic strip from his world.

-Did he ever ask for your opinion if you thought it was funny or not?

-Um, I would say, "Oh, that's really funny.

I like that."

-He'd say, "Oh, that's -- I'm glad you like it.

I never know."

-Mm-hmm.

♪♪ -I always say this is the heart and soul of the museum.

All of these are original comic strips.

-And I can tell just by the way Mr. Schulz was drawing that these are the earlier ones, as well.

-Yes, that's very early.

-Yeah, that's Snoopy before we even recognized him, right?

-Yes.

Yeah.

-Wow.

Was Mr. Schulz Charlie Brown?

-Oh, definitely.

-[ Laughs ] -Definitely Charlie Brown, and he admitted it.

He said, "I'm a little bit of Linus... -Mm-hmm.

-...you know, the philosophical part.

The crabby, cranky part is Lucy."

-Mm-hmm.

-But he said, "Mostly, I'm Charlie Brown."

-The worrier.

-The worrier, the insecure, the -- Yeah.

-What I loved so much about "Peanuts," and I think what anyone from my generation, older or even slightly younger, really get about "Peanuts" was that they really dealt with the seriousness of childhood.

They resonated with me that things did go wrong.

-Yeah, yeah.

-The sense of the simplicity that you talk of and that people say that "Peanuts" are, and yet the complexity of the emotions that it helped us as children really go, "Oh, yeah."

I mean, just when they would sit like this.

They were thinking.

-Contemplating.

-They were contemplating.

-Contemplating life, yes.

-Being surrounded by his work brings up an emotional feeling.

For me, this was my Sunday that we'd get the newspaper, and, you know, my mother would take one section, my father would take the other, but everybody in the family read the funnies -- my father, my mother, my sisters.

And then the newspaper was done.

This idea of the comic strip was so important in people's lives.

-It was a community... -Gathering, right.

Event.

And so it had such an importance, a place in our lives.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cows mooing ] ♪♪ And, so, these are your cows.

Or your girls, you call them?

-Yes, these our are girls.

-What type of girls are they?

-So, these are primarily Jerseys.

We have a copy of Holsteins in here, but we picked the Jerseys because they produce a higher amount of butterfat.

-Ah, and that makes a better cheese.

-It does make a better cheese.

I'm Donna Pacheco.

This is Pacheco Dairy.

We are a family farm.

It's my husband and I, along with our four kids.

My husband is a third-generation dairyman, and our children are the fourth.

♪♪ -At what stage is the cheese right now?

-The rennet has fermented it, so it's gelled like a Jell-O, and what we're doing is, we're cutting the curds.

-We're cutting the curds.

-And then I'm guiding it up.

-And now I finish?

-Yep.

-All of this would, in a big cheese factory, be done by a huge machine.

-This is done by hand.

If you do it by hand, the more careful you're being with the curd, the more yield you get, and so it makes a big difference in the end product.

You know, there's a science to it, and then there's the art to it.

-Achadinha Cheese is sold at 40 farmers markets across Sonoma County, and the cheese-making lessons Donna offers always end in a cheese tasting.

-This is Broncha.

This one is mold-ripened and aged just over 6 months.

♪♪ -Mmm.

Oh, that was so good.

-Also, what the girls were eating is very different, as well, so you're gonna get a little bit different flavors with that.

-That is incredible, that your product completely depends on the time of the year... -Absolutely.

-...what they're eating, what the weather is like.

I mean, you're really absolutely eating the land here, even though this is from an animal.

-Right.

-Are these all the products that you make?

-At this time, yes.

-I mean, for a small farm, that's a lot.

-Well, all we can do is hope that when somebody comes to our table, there's something that appeals to them.

-For everything.

-Yeah.

-And what has been the reward?

-Ah.

To live here.

Our kids were raised in the main house, and we want them to have the opportunity to be able to stay on the land and work in agriculture.

-And so these cheeses represent that.

-They do.

-And the animals over there made this cheese.

-Yes, they did.

-Thank you!

-[ Laughs ] [ Cow moos ] ♪♪ -I like Sonoma County because Sonoma have a very good climate, very good friends, very good people, and everybody and their family is here.

-You are the first Mexican migrant worker to then own your own vineyard.

That is an amazing accomplishment.

And you start-- Your first job here in Sonoma County was what?

-Pruning grapes.

In 1940, when everybody going to fight, when the American going and fight, there's nobody for working in the agriculture, and the government invited to the Mexican people to come here and work in agriculture, and a lot of people come and work, and they name them Los Braceros.

Los Braceros means "strong arms."

-Strong arms?

-Yes.

-Okay.

-And I am very happy be the son for one Bracero.

-We wouldn't have a wine industry if it weren't for Los Braceros.

-Yes.

-This is a blend, Los Braceros.

-Is he on the label right now?

-This is him on the label.

-Mm-hmm.

-And this is what really embodies our family story.

-From pruning and working in the fields, you then became someone who could manage entire wineries.

-He was ambitious and hungry in the sense of knowledge of getting to know why they grafted or why they pruned, and he would always ask questions, and this is something that wasn't common in a lot of people that would come out here -- is they worked their hours and they stopped working.

-Mm-hmm.

-But he wanted to own his own vineyard after the first day of working in the vineyards.

And he wanted to start off with Pinot Noir 'cause it was the hardest varietal to grow.

-Hmm.

-And he knew if he mastered that, he could move on to anything else.

It was, you know, his accomplishment to make his first vintage, which was a '92, and we actually have one of the bottles back there in a glass case that we were able to wrestle around off of him because he would drink it or just give it away to friends.

-[ Laughs ] -But he started with 100 cases, and the rest is history.

-Now, you know, we make about 26 different wines, I think.

-In 16 years?

Is that how long you've been open as a vineyard?

-Yeah, 2003, but we've been making wine since '92.

We're in the Smithsonian Museum of American History, too.

He has his own grafting knife, grafting box, and his cowboy hat in the Smithsonian.

-In Washington, D.C.?

-His own section.

American history.

-Congratulations.

-Salud.

-Cheers.

-Salud.

-Cheers.

♪♪ Ohh.

Phenomenal.

♪♪ -Everything that's done here, whether that's farm-to-table foods, wines, it's driven with a social and environmental mission.

The people are a people of place, and you feel it.

-We have the beautiful green rolling hills, but we also have the passion of generations of people that have been in agriculture, and that passion has carried through to their products.

-I grew up here, and I love the land here.

I love the climate, the food, the people, nature.

So many great things that Sonoma County has to offer.

-When a destination allows you to connect with people in their place, when you're given a rare opportunity to make new friends and meet up with old, when a place you thought you knew totally surprises... -Yay!

-Congratulations.

...that is when we share a love of travel.

And that's why Sonoma County in California is a place to love.

For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... ♪♪ -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path... on storied rivers... with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer -- proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪