Fort Davis

Due to Harry Potter, Leah no longer has time to participate in this blog. Hopefully, she will be back with us when she finishes reading the book within the next couple of days. We stopped at an El Paso bookstore on the way to Fort Davis on Saturday. Fortunately, there were still Harry Potter books left! Fort Davis is very green due to the rain. While we enjoyed our previous stops, Leah and I are happy to be at our second home. Tomorrow, we will meet Ben and Beverly in Alpine. Stay tuned as we will provide updates for our Chicago trip next week.

Heading Back East

We had a good 18 hours in San Diego. Last night, Leah and I walked a couple of blocks from our hotel to grab a beer in Old Town. Afterwards, we ate at a great Italian restaurant. This morning, I took Leah to Mission Beach and La Jolla. The weather was cloudy and 70 degrees in contrast to the sunny beach weather that we experienced in L.A. on Thursday. On the way out of town, I drove Leah to La Jolla to see the seals. As you can tell from the slide show, we got a little carried away with seal photos. All of the images from this particular slide show were taken in La Jolla. After lunch and the cookie purchase, we drove a little over 400 miles to Tucson. The temperature was 72 degrees when we left San Diego at around 1:30 P.M. The car thermometer read 103 degrees in Yuma. We arrived in 98 degree Tucson shortly after sunset. Our plan is to drive about 500 miles to Fort Davis on Saturday where we will camp through Tuesday. Both Leah and I are looking forward to relaxing in the Davis Mountains and meeting up with Ben and Beverly in Alpine.

San Diego & Tired Travelers!

Well, we are tired out! Our beach camping was a bust as all the camp locations were full - oh well. We went to Malibu and Pepperdine University - not your typical university campus! WOW. Then we had lunch on the Santa Monica Pier and walked the beach. We headed towards San Diego and tried for a hotel downtown, but alas, they were ALL booked too due to several conventions. We headed for I-8 in search of a hotel/motel, but saw a Holiday Inn Express (now we can use the line - "No, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express Once") in Old Town San Diego. We got the last room which was a suite and it's nice - boy, we lucked out.

Our plan is to go to an Irish Pub within walking distance and then hit Mission Beach tomorrow after we check out in the morning. We'll stay on the beach for a few hours and then start heading back tomorrow afternoon and find a motel on the interstate when we get tired.

Wednesday, July 18th

Wednesday was devoted totally to wine tasting. We visited six wineries. Leah and I both enjoyed the first two wineries that we visited (Alma Rosa and Sanford Winery). The host at Alma Rosa was in Sideways. The last four wineries that we visited were a little too impersonal and commercial for us (Foley, Babcock, Longoria and Roblar). We were a little frustrated in that there were a few locations that we either could not find or were closed for wine tasting. The day ended on a good note as we ate at the Los Olivos Wine Merchant & Café (remember the double date on Sideways) and I found out that one of my research articles was accepted to a prestigious journal! Tomorrow, we head south to the warm beaches of San Diego.

July 17 - Beach & Wine

What a Tuesday! Beach in the morning and wine tasting in the afternoon. After eating breakfast in Solvang, Leah and I drove north on HWY 101 for about 60 miles to check out Avila Beach and Pismo Beach. We walked along the fishing peir in Avila Beach, where we observed commercial fishermen going to work. The weather was a balmy 62 degrees. We then drove about 5 miles south to the town of Pismo Beach. This is a vacation destination for the local farmers of Central California according to our guide books. The water was quite a bit colder than the Florida Atlantic or Gulf. I could only walk ankle deep in the water. Most of the surfers and about half of the recreation beach visitors wore wet suits. We sat on the beach and read for about an hour. After grabbing two beers, a crab melt sandwich and a french dip sandwich at a restaurant off of the beach, we headed for the San Luis Obispo Wine Trail.

Leah and I have both concluded that we will have to re-evaluate how we purchase and consume wine after this trip. The local wine is fantastic! We stopped at four wineries along the trail before heading south back to our version of a Days Inn.

We concluded the evening playing Trivial Pursuit, while eating cheese and enjoying a bottle of Fess Parker Pinot Noir. Our plan on Wednesday is to do laundry in the morning before visiting a few more wineries. We are going to have dinner at a restaurant in Los Olivos. This is the location of the infamous "merlot quote" from the movie Sideways.

Wineries we visited:

Edna Valley Vineyard
Saucelito Canyon Vineyard
Domaine Alfred
Talley Vineyard

July 16 - Wine Country part II.

Monday, July 16th

Today, we visited six wineries along the Santa Maria and Foxen Canyon Wine Trails. I think that this was one of the best days of our trip up to this point. We arrived at our first stop, which was Rancho Sisquoc Winery at around 10:30 A.M. where we shared a sample of 11 wines for $5.00! Leah and I reminded each other of the “sip, swirl and dump” rule as we had a long day ahead of us. Rancho Sisquoc is a peaceful, laid back setting. Our next stop on the way to Kenneth Volk winery was Cambria winery. While the wine and service was excellent, the Cambria Winery was a little too commercial for us. We chose not to purchase a bottle of Cambria since we can buy this product in Texas. Kenneth Volk was my favorite winery of the day. This was the only stop of the day to where Leah and I did not share samples. We spent over an hour talking to the Kenneth Volk representative who was nice enough to provide us a container more suitable to transport wine bottles in addition to a wine cookbook for Leah. He said we were fun and enjoyed our visit. He was just as interesting and full of great information.

After purchasing several Volk Wines, we went to Zaca Mesa winery and shared another tasting, purchased a bottle of Syrah and a snack box of cheese, nuts, dried fruit and crackers. We hadn't eaten lunch yet and it was 3:00, so we sat under a tree at a picnic table and ate. After lunch, we went to two more wineries, Koehler where Leah found the tuxedo cat and Firestone, but we didn't sample wines. We were exhausted from our day! We came back to our camp, cooked dinner and went to bed!

It's so very dry here and the hills are brown, but the grape vines are beautiful and just what we imagined. Today we'll head to a few beaches close to San Louis Obispo and hit one or two wineries along the way and back.

Click on this page for a description of the wine trail and links to information about the wineries with a few pictures.

• Rancho Sisquoc Winery
• Cambria
• Kenneth Volk
• Zaca Mesa
• Koehler
• Firestone

The Wine Country!

Our first day in the wine country was an adventure! We had a few places to check out as far as camping goes and both Gaviota and Jamala Beach were not what we had in mind. They were way out of our way and either depressing (Gaviota) or too dangerous of a drive (Jamala). So we went with our third choice, The Flying Flags RV and campsite in Buellton. It’s great! Showers, a pool, it’s clean, wireless internet, and a great view of the mountains under the cottonwood trees at the back of the park reserved for tents – this is RV country. We’re so glad to have found a place to camp as for us, that’s a vacation itself!

After setting camp, we drove around a bit and went to the very Dutch town of Solvang and tried two wineries on the “urban” wine trail. Cabana and Presido – it was at Presido that we bought our first bottle of Syrah – something they call “artistic license.” We’re trying not to show too much of our wine ignorance and are sure to hide the wine cube from Target for fear that we’ll be tarred and feathered!

We ate a wonderful dinner at the Hitching Post – the famous restaurant featured in Sideways and had two fantastic glasses of their wine. We were in bed by 9:00 and up by 7:30 this morning and are now planning our day. We will hit the wineries that are a bit off the beaten path and more country than urban. We’re not sure of the distance, but will go to the furthest one first and then work our way down – we have about five selected. We’re doing what is suggested of tasting wines and that’s sniff, swirl, taste and dump out.

Cheers!
Leah & Wade