Quick Getaway

We decided Thurs. night that since we didn't have anything planned for the weekend, we would take off for some wine tasting (as if we haven't done that recently!) in the Cottonwood area of AZ (it's close to Sedona for the non AZ people). Drove up Friday morning and went directly to the historic mining town of Jerome. I've always wanted to go there, so finally got the chance. Neat little touristy town up on the hillside with killer views of the Verde valley below.

Of course the first business of order is food - so hit the best hamburger place there, The Haunted Hamburger.

Enjoying one of their great burgers with the great view in the background.

Enjoyed the art galleries and did some wine tasting. Didn't find any wines we liked. But the views were worth the trip.

We're staying in Cottonwood and after breakfast we headed out towards Sedona on Sat. Morning. Stopped along the way for a little hike.

The weather is a bit warmer than we thought it would be, but still beautiful. You might notice the moon above the mountain. The country up here is always beautiful to experience.

We had a nice little hike and realigned our energy at the vortex in this area.

After our hike on to Sedona to visit some art galleries and shops, stopped for lunch then onto more serious business.

Wine tasting. Found some wines we liked at Oak Creek. All the wineries we visited were just packed with people and were quite noisy (in fact so noisy that it was unpleasant). But of course this is serious business.

Continued on to Old Town Cottonwood to finish our wine tasting tour ( and the noisy crowds continued). Didn't find any other wine we wanted to take home. Now we are just sitting back enjoying a nice view from our motel balcony, Jim just going in to pop a cork on a bottle of wine to wind up the evening before heading home tomorrow morning.

Last Stop

We just got parked in our lot in Indio (at 2pm) after an 8 3/4 hour drive from Lodi. We wanted to miss the horrible traffic so was on the road by 5:15 am. Not an easy drive with traffic, construction sections, crazy drivers and bad roads. But we made it safe and sound (well maybe not mentally, wine hour might start early tonight!)

To catch you up on the past couple of days, Wed. morning we decided to leave Petaluma a day early because we were tired of the cool, overcast weather, so took off for our next stop in Lodi. We got set up in time to catch a few wineries in that area.

At Jessie's Grove, they were harvesting the Chardonnay grapes and here they are dumping them into the crusher.

Jim standing by the bin ready for crushing.

We visited several wineries, but only found a few worth purchasing.

Thursday, we had a very pleasant visit with my sister, Sharon, in Sacramento. Jim made spaghetti & meatballs for dinner and my nephew, Mike, and his daughter, Maddy, joined us for dinner. It was nice to see Sharon again.

That brings us up to the present moment. Tomorrow after cleaning & laundry, we head home.

Napa Valley

Yesterday we visited the Napa Valley wineries. Of course we ran into more people, traffic and cost. Driving over there the GPS had us turn off of the main road for a short cut over the mountain into the winery we wanted to start at. The road was the Oakville Grade - and boy was it curvy, narrow, steep and SLOW going. It sure didn't save us any time, but it was a beautiful drive through the mountains and trees.

At Raymond Vineyards they had their wines displayed by hands - something different.

Purchased a bottle of wine here. Napa is known for the Cabernet Sauvignon, but most are very dry, which we don't like. So there are fewer wines that we purchase from Napa vs Sonoma.

Of course I needed to show you another picture of grapes.

Stopped here but didn't like their wines. The place was beautiful.

Another pleasant winery, but no sale.

We spent the whole afternoon tasting and came back with about 8 bottles of wine. It took us 1 1/2 hours to drive back to the RV and by then we were both tired, so had leftovers for dinner and headed off to bed.

Today is open, haven't decided what our plans are at this moment.

Sonoma County

Sunday was our traveling day. It was only a 2 1/2 hour drive from Gilroy to Petaluma where we are parked to take day trips to wineries in Sonoma County and Napa County. Even though it was only a   2 1/2 hour trip it was plenty stressful because of the heavy traffic going through the East Bay, but we made it in one piece. Checking in at the KOA park in Petaluma, the girl gave us the wrong directions to our site so Jim had to do some maneuvering through trees and around corners to get into the site in the correct direction. But got all settled then headed out to find some close by wineries.

Our first afternoon tasting wines was a little bit out of the Twilight Zone, because we put in an address in the GPS and there wasn't anything there. (We were in a very rural area west of Petaluma). Finally gave up with this area and went over by the city of Sonoma, where we finally found some wineries. We came back with only a few bottles of wine.

Once back at the RV, we were having problems with the electricity, where the power kept fluctuating so the surge box kept turning off the power to the coach to protect all our electronics. So ran on battery power overnight. Next morning we got a maintenance person out to check it and all seemed all right. Guess it was just a fluke with the surges because everything seems fine now.

Monday we headed up the Dry Creek area in Sonoma County. This is the area from last year that we enjoyed the wines the most. We visited Pedroncelli, Fritz and here at Sbragia Winery Jim tasted their grapes. They were quite ripe and sweet.

I just love visiting the wineries this time of the year to see such beautiful, ripe grapes hanging from the vines.

A view of the valley looking South.

Then we visited our favorite winery - Ferrari-Carano where we ended up purchasing over 2 cases of wine. This is the whole reason we came back to this area, because they do not ship to AZ so have to go to the winery to purchase the wines we like. So we bought enough to last us awhile (well maybe a few months.)

We visited several more wineries, a couple were quite bad, but didn't purchase any more wine.

After a long hard day on the wine trail, we needed some R&R (it's tough having to taste all those wines.)

Today, it's off to Napa Valley. Jim is researching which wineries we will be visiting.

Car Auction-Monterey

Yes we are attending another Mecum Car Auction. We are not in the market to buy, that's good, because none of the cars in this auction are of any interest to us.

Today we walked around and looked at all the cars, then watched the auction for about 3 hours then came back to the RV where we will enjoy a quiet evening with a glass of wine and BBQ chicken and some more fresh corn. The auction is held at the Del Monte Golf Course, so all the cars are outside and the auction is in a tented area with seating. We watched from the Gold Members lounge where they serve free beer (usually they also have soda's free, but here you have to pay for a soda, but the beer is free, so guess what we were drinking?)

The car selection is quite disappointing with only a few nice classic muscle cars. Friday and Sat. are the same schedule at the auction, then we move out and head north on Sunday.

Monterey Stop

We made the trip north in about 2 hours yesterday from Paso Robles to just south of Gilroy. We are staying in a park (another tight squeeze) north of Monterey (about 5 miles south of Gilroy on Hwy 101) because we couldn't find a RV park to accommodate us closer to Monterey. We arrived around noon yesterday, after setting up we took off for wineries in this area. We didn't find any that really fit our tastes. This one winery looked nice but didn't like their wines.

This area is a big farming area and our driving around for the wineries, we found this small farm store with fresh vegetables. We picked up some corn (that tasted great), tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers, all at very reasonable prices along with being fresh.

Today, we headed down to Monterey and went on the 17 mile drive ending up in Carmel. Here is the famous Lone Cypress.

 It turned out to be a beautiful, sunny warm day. It started out overcast (usual for the coastline) and in the low 60s, but it warmed up to the mid to high 70s.

 From Carmel, we traveled inland along the Camel Valley Road to Carmel Valley Village where there must be about 10 wine tasting rooms. We sampled a few and came back with some bottles.

Here is one of the better wineries.

This one looked great, but didn't like the wine, plus we felt they were extremely overpriced.

Finally headed back to the RV (which with the traffic it took a long time). Tomorrow we head out for the real reason for our trip to this area.

Hearst Castle

Today we started out at the coast at Hearst Castle for a tour. I can't believe the people that go there - it was quite crowded. I thought for a Monday it would not be too many people, but not so. We got there about 10:30 but was able to get onto the 11:00 tour. You take a bus up the hill 5 miles to the castle to start the tour.

We took the Grand Rooms Tour, so here is the living room (at a measly 2500 sq. ft).

Hearst was into ceilings and this is the one in the living room.

 The dining room was impressive.

After the tour we walked around the grounds. Here is the pool (which in pictures is always blue), but minus the water. I guess with the water shortage in CA they drained all the fountains and pools.

Here is a picture of the front of the castle.

The view from the top.

After Hearst Castle, we drove south on 101. Stopped at Harmony Cellars - nothing good. Then went into Cayucos, visited Cayucos Cellars, but they also didn't have any good wines. But the person there recommended this Fish Smokehouse for their fish tacos. Nothing to write home about, in fact I was quite disappointed.

We hit a few more wineries on the way back to the RV and we didn't find anything we liked. I don't know if it was our taster or the wines just were not to our liking. At one winery we saw this old wine press.

Here is the Niner Winery, looks great on the outside and the inside was quite pleasant, but wine not so much.

Hit the grocery store then headed back to the RV for a quiet evening (can you believe that they charge $.10 for a paper bag and $.15 for a plastic bag? Only in CA). Packing up and heading up the coast tomorrow morning.