Napa and the Redwood Forest

Napa was beautiful, and I drank more than my fair share of wine in the three days we were there! The first day, I bought this Downtown Wine Tasting Card (which I highly recommend) that gets you free samples at twelve different tasting rooms, and spent the day reading and tasting wine at three of the tasting rooms (Uncorked, Taste and Mason Cellars). That evening was the Chef’s Market, a weekly block party with music, food, drinks, booths of stuff for sale and chef demonstrations. I was pretty excited about the latter of those, but the “chef demonstration” was literally a guy making hummus in a food processor. I was less than thrilled. :( Had an AMAZING chile releno at Bistro Sabor with Sam’s uncle Bill and his wife, Lauren, and when Sam finally could break away from work, we checked off another wine tasting at 1313 Main.

The next day we had lunch and possibly the best sangria I’ve ever had at Pica Pica, which was one of the restaurants in the much smaller Napa version of San Francisco’s Ferry Building. I found out that celebrity chef Morimoto had a restaurant in town, and decided that the cheapest way to try it out was to dine at happy hour, and I could not have enjoyed it more! We had a “pizza” which was literally covered solid in raw tuna, anchovy aioli, baby cilantro and jalapenos, a “Mori Cristo,” which was a yellowtail sandwich fried in tempura batter, and Hamachi Tacos, which were encased in tempura “taco shells.” It was IN. SANE. I have not freaked out that much since eating at Abacus in Dallas. Or at possibly since the last time I was in New Orleans! 

We crossed a few more tastings off the list at Ca’ Momi, Silo’s and the Vintage Sweet Shoppe, where I bought this amazing lemon chocolate. We finished off the day watching Shakespeare in the Park’s Twelfth Night, which, and this will only be appreciated by my good friend Lindsey, I was able to understand mostly from watching She’s the Man so many times. Yes, I admitted it on the internet, do your worst.

On Saturday, Sam finally had the day off so we were able to hop in the car, drive down the beautiful valley and do some wine tastings at the actual vineyards. It was awesome! Our favorite wine was at the Chimney Rock Winery, their 2008 Terlato Galaxy, which was $85/bottle. Maybe one day! After three vineyards, we decided we’d had enough of paying for expensive tastings and headed back downtown to finish off our Tasting Card for the trip at Bounty Hunter, Stonehedge and Napa General Store, which in addition to our free tasting of two wines, we cashed in a FourSquare deal for two for one tastings, and tried 10 more! We came back (a little tipsy) to a delicious dinner under the stars on Bill and Lauren’s patio, as we had gotten to do several times on this visit. They are such awesome people!

From there we headed to Redwood country, where we’ve been parked in front of a river for a few days, Sam working, me crafting, and counting down to actually getting to hike around in the forest. (Bears and mountain lions live in these woods, so they recommend hiking with friends, so I didn’t feel comfortable going in until Sam was able to come with me.) Let me just say… it’s amazing how many different kinds of beautiful things there are out there! The Redwoods are so incredible… it’s like a jungle, right here in the states. The state has managed to keep the trails pristine while leaving everything around the trail virtually undisturbed. And the trees, of course… we couldn’t help but dream of the epic tree houses such enormity could contain! These pictures don’t do it justice, but I’ll put them on here anyway. If you look closely at the first picture, you can see the tiny people!

We’re heading to Eugene today to finish up final details of our (my) costumes and head to FaerieWorlds tomorrow! I can’t wait!! Here is a preview of my two latest craft projects, and I'm almost done with a new pair of Moon Faerie wrap pants, which I can finish up as soon as I buy a new sewing machine.