And we are off!.... My first official trip of the blog was to Napa for Rebecca and Mark's wedding. Rebecca is one of Jennifer's best friends from Arcadia and they used to play volleyball together. Jennifer says no one will ever set for her as well as Becky did. Anyway, here are some pics from the trip. I will try to include a link to a bigger album when I can. We stayed at the John Muir Inn which was nicely located in a central area of the valley, but a little spartan as far as accommodations go. There was a Marie Calendar's next door which made breakfast an easy task each morning and they gave you $5 off each morning. The wedding was at the Archer Preserve which was a beautiful nature preserve with a fantastic drive up a very narrow winding road. The drive alone was worth it if you follow Redwood straight east. I guess there is a hike back there, but I'm not sure if the preserve is open to the public all of the time.
We stopped at the Mumm sparkling winery which is the sister winery to the one we visited in Reims, France. This one was a lot more industrial, but a little off the beaten path and I would highly recommend it. We also visited another sparkling winery - Domaine Carneros - which is owned by Taittinger and is a very large castle on a hill with the view I included here. BTW, they have to call it sparkling wine because only sparkling wine from the Champagne region can be called such. Great upgrade and $50 "refund" from Hertz when I raised a stink that they didn't have the car I reserved online when I arrived w/ my Gold Club membership. I felt like Seinfeld (anyone can just TAKE a reservation, it's KEEPING the reservation that's the hard part!). They wanted to give me an SUV as an upgrade and I told them that wasn't much of an upgrade with gas prices being what they are in California... The whole 3 day rental cost $38 - and this was on Memorial Day weekend! SCORE!
We'll be heading back there soon I hope to visit Brooke and Sean and also Josh and Helene in SanFran. More pics then. I'm off to Chi-town Friday so get ready Amanda and Lucas! And I'm bringing my umbrella for what I hope is an incorrect forecast for "scattered" thunderstorms... I'll try to bring the AZ sunshine with me on the plane.
