The Travel Post!

This weekend we drove up to Napa to visit family. It was so beautiful and so fun. The trip was just what I needed. I think I had just been getting too wrapped up in work and all of the Lenny kookiness and other life stresses for my own good. But this weekend helped bring me back to earth. Wine tasting all weekend was fantastic fun.

We left Friday afternoon. The drive was not that bad actually. There was hardly any traffic. And the views were just beautiful. (see title picture).

Everything was going pretty smooth until we missed our freeway interchange. So we wound up having to go through San Francisco. Which brings me to this question... What is it with San Francisco and freeways? We could not locate an on ramp for beans. It has to be the most complicated thing I have ever done. Algebra? Piece of cake. Putting together a bookcase for Ikea? No Prob. But finding a freeway on ramp in San Francisco? Forget it. I suck, I fail. I cannot do it. It took us almost two hours driving though the city to find it. When we finally did we decided to get some gas first. We went inside, paid for it, took pee breaks and drove off. Three blocks later we realized that the gas we paid for was never pumped and had to turn around. Smack on forehead. I blame the stupidity on malnourishment. A three Musketeers does not a meal make! But I did get this pretty cool picture of the golden gate at night.

We finally arrived to my sister in laws house a little after 11. We were welcomed with some glasses of wine. I was totally buzzed after half a glass and fell asleep.

The next day we went wine tasting. On the way to the winery's we stopped to get coffee at this place. It was an interesting combo. I would venture to say it was almost as odd, if not more so, as the Chinese food and donuts places. It was a coffee house/adult toy store. Yes kids adult toys. So next to bags of whole bean coffee, were bottles of lube and displayed nicely next to quaint little coffee mugs were dildos. I was instantly in the fourth grade and could not stop giggling. We wound up passing on the coffee. I think it was too much to take seriously. Needless to say with our potty humor the jokes were endless for the rest of the day.

We went to three places for tastings, Korbel, Hop Kiln and Rochioli. My favorite of the three was Hop Kiln. The wine was so good and it was just beautiful. It's beautiful everywhere up there but there is something about being surrounded by vineyards that just makes everything feel better. It very well could be the free wine tastings that make being up there all warm and fuzzy but the scenery has a lot to do with it too. See for yourself...

The Rochioli Vineyard

The Hop Kiln Winery

The River on the way to Healdsberg


The great thing about wine tasting is that it's really good and it's free! Each place gives you four complementary tastes and we went to three places. Lets do the math shall we? That's four tastes at three places equals 12! That adds up to about two glasses of wine for free. Sweeeet. And the warm and fuzzys ain't bad neither. The only down side is that it does make you kind of sleepy. So it is not an all day kind of activity. It is definitely something that requires a nappy after.

The rest of the trip was pretty great. There's a lot more that happened. And a lot of stories to tell, like how my nephews and my brother in law stayed up all night on Sunday trying to kill the rats living in their apple tree with a pellet gun. And how because of that I had an intense prayer session with Saint Francis that they wouldn't be able to. My prayer was answered and no rats got shot. Silly me told them what I had done and now my brother in law thinks I have some kind of crazy saint connection and is somewhat frightened of me. There's also the story of how the dudes in the family all went kayaking and mattys boat tipped over. But that's pretty much it.

Though I wish it had been a few days longer, it was a wonderful trip and I am happy that I had such a great time.