In contrast to the Sharpsteen Museum, the Napa Valley Museum was half a disappointment. I say half because it is roughly divided in two, with an upstairs rotating exhibit and a downstairs permanent exhibit. Located next to the Veterans Home, you might expect it to honor the veterans. Not exactly. Personally, I happily own up to the refrain, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." I like, not. You're treated to a display of modern art style sketches of people somehow related to wine making. Some are by executives, journalists, others by chefs, and others by people who hopefully will not quit their wine-related day job, or at least are better at making wine than making art. A small display case shows a row of a half a dozen medals along with photos of the men who earned them. That's it for veterans. On the bottom floor, a permanent exhibit features interactive stations about winemaking. This is quite interesting and includes computer touch screens that take you through the process of selecting a wine with dinner, and my favorite, selecting the steps for making award-winning wine. For those that are interested, at the end of this test, I had a 75% chance of making something worthy of an award. Another wall showed the effects of drinking. I could lose the mime, but the rest was fairly interesting. All in all, we went through the museum in about 20 minutes. It's not worth a stop unless the rotating exhibit offers some real art, which, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. More Napa Valley Napa Valley (Calistoga, CA, USA) Sharpsteen Museum and Brannan Cottage (Calistoga, CA, USA) Napa Valley Museum (Napa Valley, CA, USA) Stonegate, Sterling, and Beringer Wineries (Napa Valley, CA, USA) Back to List of Historical Sites Back to Travel Master List Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1999 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com