Guest writer Holly White-Wolf tells us all about this weekend's Gravenstein Apple Fair, a century-old tradition in the Sonoma County town of Sebastopol, about 40 minutes north of Marin. Holly shares the "art of mothering" with readers in Sonoma County and beyond on her blog and community website sono-ma.com.

Imagine spending a day walking across meadows under ancient oaks following your nose to food booths featuring frying apple fritters or slices of 4 inch high apple pie. Picture sitting on rustic benches (hefty planks resting on hay bales) while taking in terrific, acoustic music. Then, conjure up the noise of a turn of the century barnyard - complete with the bray of horses and the clanking of old-time harvesting machines - and you'll get a sense of the many agricultural attractions abounding at this event. Yes sir, Sonoma County's summertime, vintage jewel is the annual Apple Fair at Ragle Ranch Park. Let's explore what's in store for 2011.

One of our absolute favorite family day trips is to the town of Sonoma. Sonoma is a fantastic wine country destination for either a family outing or a weekend getawaty. About a half-hour’s drive from northern Marin, Sonoma is not as busy or as up-to-the-moment trendy as the Napa Valley, its flashier Wine Country neighbor to the east, but it manages to be at the same time both quaint and sophisticated, with a clear sense of tradition and history. Above all, Sonoma is a great place for families, since the Wine Country isn’t necessarily all about wine.

One of our favorite things to do is to stake out a place in Sonoma’s historic downtown Plaza, and have a picnic. Once the parade ground for the Mexican soldiers stationed here in the 19th century, the Plaza is an expansive park in the heart of Sonoma, with lush green lawns, two playgrounds, fountains, a pond with ducks, and plenty of shade. It’s the perfect place for families to relax and play. There's often something fun going on here, too, like art shows, a farmer's market, and even an annual ox roast celebration.

One of the best things about being a dad is getting to take my own children on the kinds of outings I did with my dad way back when I was kid. One of the things we did was to head out into the wild of Northern California in search of cool machinery to look at, especially airplanes. It's fun, exciting, noisy, fascinating, and in many cases free. After all, what kid doesn't dream of flying, especially in an open-cockpit biplane? One of my favorite local spots for an airplane-watching outing is Sonoma Valley Airport, also known as the Schelleville Airport, located just south of the town of Sonoma. The romance of the Golden Age of Aviation lives on in this small airport, and one weekend a month the planes' owners put them on display for visitors to come see.

The Sonoma Valley Airport holds these "display days" on the second weekend of every month, where the owners of the vintage aircraft open their hangars and show off their planes. Schelleville aiport is home to numerous different historic planes, making it a living aviation museum of sorts. This month's display days are this weekend, May 14 and 15, from noon to 4 pm. Feel free to wander the hangar rows and check out the planes on view. The

In case you missed or just didn't get enough of the Marin County Fair, you'll be happy to know that the 2009 Sonoma County Fair starts today at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, and runs through Sunday, August 9. It's worth checking out if you've never been: it's bigger and a lot different than Marin's smaller, more intimate fair, and has more of an agricultural focus, which is natural for a more rural county like Sonoma. The Sonoma County Fair also features a famous annual flower show, which is usually really worth seeing.

This year's theme is "The Fair Before Time", so there are plenty of dinosaur-themed attractions on hand, including three-dozen life-size dinosaur replicas sited througout the fair and Dinosaur Island, where aspiring paleontologists can dig for dinosaur skeletons, build volcanoes, and paint on a mural. Dinosaur identification, imitation, and look-alike contests will be held, and the flower show this year has been dubbed "The Garden that Time Forgot"! The Fair also holds a daily parade, which this year features two special guests: a 10-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex and a 20-foot-long Stegosaurus.