Everyone likes to celebrate Independence Day with a grand fireworks spectacular, right? Many people have their favorite Bay Area displays. The mighty San Francisco show is often cited as the best in the area. I've seen it a few times, and it is good, although any decent viewing area is crazy crowded and the summer fog can make things hard to see. A boat on the Bay is the really the ideal venue, but be warned: the coldest I've ever been—and I am not exaggerating—is the Fourth of July on San Francisco Bay watching fireworks. I was wearing a t-shirt, a turtleneck, a wool sweater (and not just any wool sweater, but an honest-to-God Norwegian fisherman's sweater), and a parka, and I still froze my butt off.

My choice for the best show in the Bay Area is, believe it or not, the Sonoma fireworks display. It's amazingly impressive, especially when you realize it's being put on by the little town of Sonoma, and you can get great views of it from many spots in town, although the tradition is to trek over to the field near Vallejo's house with your blanket and camp out there to see the show. It's usually warm, and fog has, to my knowledge, never put a damper on events. I've always been fortunate to have lived (during a brief period of exile from Marin) or had family or friends  who lived in Sonoma, so I've been going to their fireworks display for years.

The only downside is that if you don't live in town, trying to get out of Sonoma after the fireworks can be miserable, with every street leading to highway 12 or 121 jam-packed with fellow out-of-towners trying to get home. So, seriously, give yourself at least a half-hour to get out of town, or find some friends to hang out with until the traffic dies down.

One thing I've found with little kids is that their sleep schedules don't often cooperate with the darkness needed for fireworks viewing, so we've missed the Sonoma display for the last couple years, and I'm not going to put money on us getting there this year.