Things to Do in Lafayette

On a 15-acre estate located at the sunny eastern base of Mount Diablo, Isabella Farms assists novice riders and skilled equinauts alike in honing horseback-riding skills. After choosing from a lineup of premiere horses, riders gather their steeds from the pasture, bonding with mounts while learning how to saddle, bridle, and interpret furtive tail swishes. After an instructor cruises through the basics of western riding and safety, groups of no more than seven students embark on a guided three-hour trail tour, ambling through a landscape of old-growth oak trees and rolling hills. Riders are encouraged to wear or bring along jeans, sunscreen, sunglasses, a hat, low-heeled boots, water, a snack, and a salt lick shaped as a bouquet of flowers for befriending the horse.

An intro-to-sailing lesson with OCSC is designed both for beginners who can't tell a mermaid from Ethel Merman and for more-intermediate students of the stern and aft looking to perfect their technique. Skilled and certified instructors teach each lesson, while a low teacher-to-student ratio ensures plenty of attention and instruction for all involved. Your lesson will focus on practical training, creating a prime opportunity to get some on-the-water experience beneath your sails. Over the course of two hours, you'll be exposed to different roles and positions on the yacht, including the position of steely-eyed helmsman. By the end of the salt-sprayed session, you won't be a certified skipper, but you'll have had a sublime time and tasted the sailing experience, which always tastes like a combination of warm brownies and cold milk.

Color Me Mine puts paintbrushes and pottery in the mitts of customers old and young. Budding Toyozo Arakawas will follow six easy steps to craft beautifully painted ceramics, first choosing a ceramic piece (most cost between $12 and $70) from Color Me Mine's selection of hundreds of seasonally changing items. After charting out the desired design from individual imagination or Color Me Mine's idea gallery, painters will select an underglaze from a cast of more than 50 colors, then apply paint with the focus of a peregrine falcon occupied by a Rockwellian spirit. Color Me Mine handles all kiln-firing work, allowing clients to take home their final products within three to five days.

Although it hasn't quite reached the level of Napa Valley's 400-plus wineries, the East Bay's wine scene has experienced a rebirth—and East Bay Winery Bike Tours intends to ride right alongside as it continues to grow. Led by owner Jon Zalon, the company takes to the streets on two wheels to explore the area's ever-expanding collection of urban wineries and the faces behind the bottles at each stop.

In 2012, Diablo magazine plopped East Bay Winery Bike Tours at No. 10 on its "50 Things You Gotta do This Summer" list. No matter the season, EBWBT's rides present safe, scenic routes that include everything from a trip to an Oakland estuary to a pleasant cruise down Alameda's palm-lined streets—all without having to rent a car or a horse to drive that car. Every tour also makes sure to set aside plenty of time to soak in the surroundings, including picnics packed with homemade food.

Operating for more than a decade, Piedmont Avenue Pumpkin Patch both hosts Halloween outings and brings autumnal revelry to you. The expansive pumpkin patch and halloween store sell 15 types of pumpkins, as well as fall essentials such as gourds, masks, spider webs, and multicolored Indian corn. A harrowing haunted house tests visitors’ adrenal glands with dark corners, spooky sounds, and a befuddling maze. In addition to supplying frights, the staff also constructs pumpkin patches off site, redecorating homes and offices with pumpkins, straw bales, and house-trained scarecrows.

Though FLOAT’s neon sign is small and easy to miss in the window of a converted historic cotton mill, its interior is anything but unremarkable. The artist-owned urban art spa stimulates the mind with work from established and rising local artists and submerges clients in warm, dark chambers that relieve bodies of their senses. These floatation therapy sessions enhance relaxation and open up channels of creativity, freeing brains from the incessant digital stimulation and algebraic speed-limit signs of the outside world. While enclosed inside the tank, clients float in a weightless state in a solution composed of 1,000 pounds of medical-grade Epsom salts and water. There, air, water, and skin become alike—refreshing the nerves while recharging the mind more efficiently than sleep. Complementing floatation sessions are massage services that enhance already relaxed states.