Page 95 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL WINTER SPRING 2022

have high profile people here, we don’t want
people just hanging around,” he explained after
asking me who I was and if I were a guest.
But Alisal doesn’t feel highflautin’. Guests are
housed in some 73 cottages/duplexes scattered in
a treesy landscape that’s cut by a meandering
rocky creek bed. Many of the staff and guests we
talked to mentioned “family” as the biggest draw.
When I asked Beardsley, who’s been here since
2003, what he liked best about the place, he said,
“Watching the kids of guests grow up. Their
families first came when I first came.”
Palm Desert couple, Ron and Teresa Nall, who
I’d met by the pool complex, summed up what may
be the typical Alisal guest reaction: “We chose
Alisal because good friends of ours had stayed
there and kept raving about the place. It’s just
such a great place to take your whole family.”
There’s definitely a nostalgic element as well.
While our accommodations were comfy and well-
appointed, they weren’t luxurious. “It’s very old
school,” is how General Manager Kathleen
Cochran described Alisal. And, in fact, the guests’
quarters have no TVs or phones and men must
wear sports jackets to dinner. “Young people hear
about us from their grandparents,” Cochran told
me. “And they tell their kids: ‘This is how it used to
all look like. The best of California -- quieter,
simpler.’“
She’s got a point. Our first morning we woke to
the sound of crowing roosters and horses
whinnying in a pasture about 40 yards from our
front door. We saw deer in the hillsides, hawks
circling overhead, flocks of wild turkeys, and signs
warning of rattlesnakes. As we walked to the
dining hall for breakfast, every other guest was
wearing jeans and either a baseball cap or cowboy
hat. All this just a two-hour drive from downtown
Hollywood.
Horses are a big deal here -- Bohannan told me
they had around 110 head (all geldings) – and Top left: On the Deer Creek trail.
within an hour of our arrival, Jody was mounted
Opposite Left: View outside the front door of our
up for a trail ride. “Expert” level, of course. She’s
guest room at Alisal.
been riding for 40-plus years and runs our 50-acre Left: Trail leader Cassidy Falk watching as a
horse farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. When
tanker splashes bright magenta fire retardant
she joined my rookie group the next morning it
over the Alisal fire,
was to keep an eye on me and because she’ll ride
any time anywhere. Top: One of the Alisal dining rooms.

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