Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

AN FRANCISCANS have long ducked off Highway 29 to wait out the traffic with a stroll through one of downtown Napa's neighborhoods of wide streets, airy parks and gingerbread-style houses. But lately, there's been reason to linger a bit longer in this once sleepy town at the stem of the Napa Valley wine country. With hip eateries, a contemporary art museum on the revitalized riverfront and a 19th-century opera house now featuring a series of world music performances, downtown Napa has become a destination in its own right. Behind some of the oldest stone storefronts in California you can discover the newest flavor combinations, with-it clothing stores, and a sense that you've found something hidden, something on the verge of a boom.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) Park and Sip
There are two ways to reach Napa by car from San Francisco. One is traffic choked, the other so scenic you'll swear you've driven hours, not just 30 or 40 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. So head up Highway 101 and take your first wine-tasting break on the inviting terrace of the new Nicholson Ranch Winery (4200 Napa Road, 707-938-8822), where the view includes vine-covered hills, llamas and a dairy farm. Once in town, look for the sandstone facade of the Pfeiffer Building, Napa's oldest commercial building, which started life as a brewery in 1875. Inside is the Vintner's Collective (1245 Main Street, 707-255-7150), where a handful of small vineyards — from D-Cubed to Mi Sueno — offer tastings. The twist: The room feels like an urban cocktail lounge, with upbeat music and swank club chairs; $10 for four tastes. Open until 6 p.m.
7 p.m.
2) Riverfront Dining
By day, the Napa General Store (540 Main Street, 707-259-0762), is a takeout shop, but Wednesday through Saturday, as the sun goes down, the tablecloths come out and it is transformed into the General Café restaurant, where you can dine on the patio overlooking the Napa River. Fans of San Francisco's most celebrated Vietnamese restaurant, the Slanted Door, will appreciate rediscovering Nam Phan, a former chef at the Slanted Door, and Judy Takasaki, a former pastry chef there. Try Vietnamese crepes ($7.75) with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts and finish with Scharffen Berger chocolate cake ($6.50), decadently topped with fresh berries and cream.

Decades ago, most second-home owners were escapees from fog-shrouded San Francisco seeking summer sun. Recently, however, buyers have come from Los Angeles, Texas, the East Coast and even beyond North America. Each region has a distinct personality, with the Napa Valley typically more upscale and Sonoma County a bit more laid back.
It is no mystery why the towns and countryside here are so attractive to second-home seekers: seduced by high-quality restaurants, coast-side golf courses, unique shops and galleries, easy access to the Pacific and the redwood forests, and wineries that routinely outrank the top French producers, many see paradise in this nook of Northern California.
NAPA COUNTY
With vineyard-lined hills, hot-air balloon rides and top-ranked restaurants, the Napa Valley — stretching from the town of Napa up to Calistoga — is a place where travelers’ dreams come true. Strict growth limits, including a virtual moratorium on subdividing land outside of city limits, have preserved its agricultural heritage.
After remaining flat for most of the 1990’s, prices in the region have taken off, doubling or tripling over the past eight years. Many sales experts say prices have plateaued in recent months and probably won’t be climbing in the short term. But the general wisdom is that California real estate, especially in places like Napa and Sonoma, is almost always a good long-term bet.
Napa
With more than 70,000 residents (over half the county’s population), Napa has grown into a midsize city in the last few decades. It is the hub of the valley, with grocery stores, chain restaurants and shopping outlets. Its housing stock ranges from affordable Craftsman bungalows to rambling Victorians, and its geographic focal point is the Napa River. A wine-tasting and shopping center called Copia has drawn busloads of tourists to the downtown.
There are two 18-hole golf courses nearby: the Napa Valley Country Club and Silverado Country Club. They might be one reason that many second-home buyers choose to live near, not in, Napa. Homes just outside of town are popular because they feel remote and private, yet are 10 to 15 minutes from downtown attractions.
As soon as you leave Napa’s city limits, you enter a landscape of tawny hills, oak grasslands and elegant ranch-style houses. You won’t find sidewalks or storm drains; instead you will marvel at vistas of vineyards backed by stately mountains to the east and west.
Jocelyne Monello, a real estate agent who moved to Napa from France in the mid-1970’s, says she has seen tremendous changes since then. It used to be that “nobody knew what a French baguette was,” she said. “Now I can get one in any market.”
She recalled Napa as “a real country town with lots of horses,” adding, “We used to go to San Francisco for a nice evening, but now we don’t need to do that.”
In addition to great cuisine, there are cultural events ranging from the Emerson String Quartet to the Chilean band Inti-Illimani, usually held in the Napa Valley Opera House.

Just 40 miles from Denver — and with little more than 100 full-time residents — Black Hawk unfolds along a ravine dotted with tumbledown mines and colorful gingerbread-style homes. Its dusty main drag, often crammed with tour buses, passes through Victorian-era general stores and hotels refashioned into casinos with names like Bullwhackers and Bull Durham.
But a state law requiring casinos to boot out gamers at 2 a.m. and limiting bets to $5 has mostly confined the gambling action in Black Hawk to penny jackpots and Texas Hold ’Em tournaments with all the excitement of a church bingo game. As a result, its casinos have catered mostly to casual gamblers and retirees.
This summer, however, the stakes in Black Hawk are being raised.
On July 2, a new state law goes into effect that raises betting limits to $100, and allows Colorado’s casinos to remain open around the clock and add craps and roulette tables. In anticipation, casinos are expanding their pits, sprucing up their entertainment options and replacing all-you-can-eat buffets with broader dining choices.
With swankier accommodations and larger jackpots in the offing, local officials expect Black Hawk to become a bigger draw for high rollers from the Denver area and beyond.
“We’re hoping to garner some of the folks who in the past would have gone to Vegas,” said David Spellman, the town’s tanned and goateed mayor and a fifth-generation native. “With table games like roulette, this place will generate more excitement.”

Finally, from the top of a mountain peak, there was the wine country at last. Grids of green vineyards stretched for miles. Far below, perched on a hilltop, stood a white stucco winery that seemed small as a matchbox.
From the highway, Napa seems to be wall-to-wall vineyards. But from the trails that snake through the hills of the county, you can see just how little of it is actually covered in vines — only about 9 percent.
I had detoured into the hills to appreciate the Napa terroir in a new way — by hiking it. Napa offers a rare pairing of wine and wilderness. The climate and topography that make the region so ripe for viticulture also have created misty forests, petrified trees, striking rock formations and peaks with sweeping views of the vineyards.
“The hiking in Napa Valley is phenomenal,” said Ken Stanton, author of the guidebook “Great Day Hikes In and Around Napa Valley.” “There are places that still look like they did a hundred years ago.”
Better yet, hiking Napa means you don't have to sleep in a tent. Several excellent hikes lie within a short drive of the valley's renowned bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and wineries. You can easily design an itinerary that captures the duality of Napa: a series of day hikes in the hills fueled by nights of food and wine on the valley floor.
A good place to begin is in the heart of wine country, at Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, five miles north of the craftsman homes and Victorian mansions of St. Helena.
In the woods of Bothe, you can imagine Napa as the early settlers might have seen it. The park nestles against the western slope of the valley, where some of Napa's oldest wineries, like Beringer and Schramsberg, dug their first wine caves in the 1800s.