Second of two parts

If you visit the Lake County wineries featured on Page D3 of Wednesday's Living Here Food & Wine section, your trip will involve long, scenic drives on narrow and twisting roads populated by skittering quail and unpredictable deer.

Only a handful of wineries are placed conveniently along one of the principal highways around Clear Lake, though that's changing as more open tasting rooms in Kelseyville, Clearlake Oaks and other small settlements about the lake.

Until then, you will have the excuse to explore. Although the county is compact, the vistas are diverse.

One moment you will be driving across a vast open meadow suggestive of Nevada rangeland, complete with spools of hay stacked like wine barrels, and the next you will be winding up a narrow canyon road shaded with black oaks and gray pines.

Accommodations often run to scatterings of cottages suggestive of auto courts from the 1950s. Mom-and-pop cafes vastly outnumber destination restaurants. Many residences have a trailer hitch.

"You know you're in Lake County if your house has wheels under it," quipped one local wag. In fact, several towns have such unimaginative names that suggest that their founders expected to leave shortly – Lower Lake, Upper Lake, Middletown in between.

Motorists from Sacramento who arrive at the east side of Clear Lake on Highway 20 – the quickest route – can begin a leisurely circuit of the lake by continuing northwest through Clearlake Oaks and Glenhaven to Lucerne, where signs on both sides of the town welcome visitors to the "Switzerland of America."

Well, there is the lake, likened in an 1873 history of the region to an "old-fashioned silk purse," bulbous at one end, bound tightly in the middle, and branching off into smaller folds at the other extreme.

At 19 miles long and 8 miles across at its widest, it's the largest freshwater lake in California, bigger even than the state's share of Lake Tahoe. It's shallow, warm and lately marred by the perennial curse of blue-green algae, which clouds and stinks up the water.

Yet locals brag that ESPN has christened Clear Lake the second-best source of bass fishing in the Western Hemisphere. (None, however, could recall the No. 1 bass lake on the ESPN list, though several speculated it's in Florida. Actually, it's Lake Amistad in Texas.)

While the lake is a pretty recreational gem, Lucerne is no, well, Luzern. Clover Valley north of town has dairy farms, and some residents have tried to replicate Alpine architecture, but beyond that Lucerne has absolutely nothing to suggest Switzerland – no cheese shops, no Swiss bakeries, no cafes specializing in rich fondues.

It does, however, have the Lake County Visitor Center, which ESPN may want to rank as its No. 1 source of tourist information.

Just north of Lucerne are the neighboring wineries Tulip Hill and Ceago Vinegarden, the latter a genuine touch of Napa Valley in laid-back Lake County, complete with three posh overnight casitas and a private pier for boaters to tie up for a tasting.

Beyond Ceago Vinegarden are the towns of Nice – home of the Woodpecker, John Hathaway's woodworking shop devoted to rustic birdhouses and bat houses – and Upper Lake, which is quickly evolving into the county's cultural center.

Nevertheless, Upper Lake is easy to overlook. Its two-block Main Street, jutting north off Highway 20, is deceptively quiet.

But a quick stroll reveals the stately Tallman Hotel, where some rooms have patios with Japanese ofuro soaking tubs kept at a constant 98 degrees, others vintage plumbing fixtures restored by Sheldon Steinberg at his neighboring studio barn The Elegant Bowl, the town's old livery stable; the adjoining Blue Wing Saloon & Cafe; the Lake County Wine Studio, a tasting room specializing in the wines of local boutique wineries; and MJ's Place, a pot shop whose extensive inventory runs from art-glass bongs to canisters of bat guano.

In Nice, you'll find nine restored cabooses scattered through a grove of redwood and oak at the northern reaches of Clear Lake.

Yet "Lake County is the only county in California to not have a railroad," says Tony Barthel.

The irony isn't lost on Barthel and his wife, Peggy, innkeepers of Featherbed Railroad.

They rent out the cabooses, each a private suite with a whimsical theme. One is devoted to Harley Davidson memorabilia, another was inspired by the music of Jimmy Buffet, while a third pays tribute to western Americana with a clawfoot tub, gleaming woodwork, "Howdy" in barbed wire and a high two-seat cupola for looking out over grounds and lake while savoring a glass of wine.

This sounds like a good spot to end a scenic drive.