Travel Tuesday: Napa

Remember the time I wrote a couple posts about Kev and I's one year anniversary trip to Cali?

Yeah I barely did either.

Welp, I've found the prefect way to follow up and show you the rest of the trip..if you missed the first few posts you can find them here, here & here!

Kev and I knew that we wanted to hit up Napa while we were out there but we needed to figure out the logistics of how to get from San Fran to Napa and back.

Well we found a tour (Wine Country Tour Shuttle) that picked us up the Ferry Building in San Francisco, drove us to Sonoma Valley/Napa, took us around to four different vineyards and then brought us back to San Fran via ferry through the bay!

The tour was great and if you ever head out that way I suggest you look them up!

They have two different tour options, we went with the Napa Experience with Ferry tour.

The four vineyards we went to were:
Franciscan Winery

V. Sattui Winery

Andretti Winery

Rutherford Wine Company

 

It was the perfect set up and Kev and I had so much fun!

The Ferry Building in San Fran

San Fransisco Bay

Franciscan Winery

We got to taste the grapes that made the wine.

Since we went in October pretty much all of the white wine grapes had already been picked so it was mostly reds for us :)

 This and the next two pictures are the different "behind the scenes" areas for the different vineyards!

 All of those white boxes are stuffed with grapes to be made into wine!

These are much bigger than they seem, you'll see a picture of Kev next to one later :)
Did you know the type of wood wine is stored in can greatly affect the taste of the wine?

The taste can also be highly impacted by how long they "toasted" the barrel for.

 V. Sattui Winery

 

This was by far my favorite vineyard that we hit up!

They have a huge deli area with meats, cheeses, and other wine appropriate snacks.

We actually ordered a couple of Christmas presents for people from here and they loved it!

So if anyone needs a good gift I would suggest taking a look at their site.

All of the vineyards had a fee for their wine tasting. 

V Sattui's was supposed to be $20 for 8 tastings...

Well the woman that was serving us was very generous and I'm pretty sure we got closer to 15 tasting!

I had to step away from the table...not kidding lol.

Kev and I ended up getting a few bottles of wine for ourselves

One for our anniversary dinner the next night

A traveling FYI - All restaurants in San Fran allow/have to let patrons bring in their own wine if they want too. 

There is usually a small corking fee but well worth it if you want to drink some wine without buying the restaurant price for a glass! 

 

The one we are holding here we bought and are keeping to drink on our 5 year anniversary!

We thought it'd be fun to buy something like that for us to think back too!

The other two we took home...and drank very quickly!

Andretti Winery

Yes, this is owned by race car driving family Andretti and it is super cute.

I loved the charm of this place overall and I would have to say we learned the most about the wine making process and what goes into a vineyard here than any of the other places.

Kev getting wine for the "bunghole" 

I am not even joking when I say that...the hole in a wine barrel is called a bunghole.

I feel dirty just writing the word and it takes me right back to Beavis and Butthead...beh...not what you should think of when wine tasting in Napa right?!

 

The last winery was pretty small and looked more like a business store than a winery.

It was pretty though and probably the best place to end the tour because I think everyone was pretty tired, drunk, and needed the rest their little living room style tasting room provided. 

As I mentioned on the way home we got to take a Ferry across the bay and funny enough while crossing from the Napa side to the San Fran side you will pass by the San Quentin Prison!

Luckily these were the last views we got and not the prison! 

Needless to say I want go back to Napa, and I want to take friends!

I think it's a great place to have a friends trip!

So much wine, so little time!

Happy Tuesday friends!

Yosemite: Day 2

Yes it has seriously taken me this freaking long to get to just day 2 of the Yosemite trip.
I'm blaming a lot of random happenings through the week and me getting very sick.
I think those are two legit reasons, but I'm still a little annoyed with myself for not being better about this.

Granted it's the only day left, but I wanted to get some more pictures out there. 

Then of course I still have San Fran =/ Clearly blogging is not taking the front burner in my life so I apologies for any lulls or just completely random crap that comes up in the next week or so until I get my life back to normal.

Anyway!

On the second day in Yosemite Kev really wanted to hike this trail, called Half Dome.
Ok well technically Half Dome is mountain top you reach, but you get my point.
If you know what Half Dome is you are probably saying "oh my".
If you don't Half Dome is a hike that is about 14-16 mile round trip depending on the route you take.
A lot of people do this hike in two days since it's "very sternous"
And it was, and we did this in a day!
Yosemite Valley is already 5000 ft above sea level, and on the Half Dome hike alone you climb up another 5000 ft!
That's a lot of elevation for a girl from Ohio!
We started at 5AM - in the pitch dark of the Yosemite mountain wilderness (it was cool and a little scary, won't lie), and ended at like 5PM.
That's right 12 hours of up hill and down hill walking.
Killer!
I did not make it all the way to the top, it was just to much for me, but Kevin did!
I will note I was almost there, that last mile is like straight up so a mile off, and next time I'm doing it all!

The pictures can give you the rest :)

 The first pictures of the morning.
Aka the first light!
This was about an hour or so into the hike for us.

 I'm still looking fairly happy here.
I didn't feel the greatest thanks to the elevation so I had a bit of a rough morning.

 This is area is called Little Yosemite and it's the place where the folks who do a two/three day hike would stay for the night.
It was the most beautiful "campsite" I've ever seen.
The only water you could get was from the river!

 Only 2 more miles, after we'd already hiked about 4.5

 About a mile after this is when I stopped, at a nice view point.
The pictures going forward are all from Kev as he continued up!

 Bottom of Half Dome in sight!
The "bottom" of Half Dome is called Sub Dome.
Many people stop here because 1) you have to have a permit to go to the top and 2) the cables (see below)

 These are the granite "steps" you have to climb up for the last mile or so!
As you can see they aren't that clear and there is no hand rails or anything.
Kev said this part was almost the worst because of how uneasy you felt with just a cliff at your side.

These are the cables that take you to the very top of Half Dome.
They are just a set of cables on either sight of you and the climb is at about a 60 degree angle on smooth granite!
To get down you have to walk down backwards, almost like you are repelling yourself down.

Kev at the very top!

Some amazing views!

The top is actually pretty wide across, but all those little tiny people are the other side, so not that big.

 I was there in spirit :)

 These are just some pictures of nature on the way down.

We have a gazillion pictures from this hike, but there is only so much of nature that I can show you.
This hike was probably one of the hardest physical things I've had to do.
If you go to Yosemite I say give this a try!
If you are active you can do it in a day, if you aren't or have elevation problems do it in two!
You wouldn't regret it.

Happy Thursday!

Yosemite: Day 1

I think I should start by saying the Yosemite was probably my favorite part of this trip!

I wouldn't consider myself the outdoorsy type, not that I don't go outside or I'm not active, but Yosemite was easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. 

No picture you see will ever do the place justice.
It gives you a great idea, but when you are standing there with the massive trees and mountains, the bluest sky you've probably ever seen, and a nice cool breeze you would swear you were in Heaven.

Being the discount site junkie that I am I had found Kev and I a cabin deal for the Redwoods in Yosemite.
They rent out all different kinds of cabins, based on the number of people staying, some you can have pets in, some are more...rustic than others, etc. 

Kev and I picked out this cute little studio cabin and it was perfect.

The scenery was even better.
 

The first day Kev and I decided to kind of take it easy since we knew we were going to attempt to do the Half Dome hike in a day.
So we headed for Mariposa Grove, where all the Redwoods & Sequiaos are.
It has to be one of my favorite places. The sight of the trees and the smell. It was amazing!
 

 

 

The Fallen Tunnel Tree.

 

You can barely even see Kev in there!

 

Kev clearing our path lol.

 

This tree is called Faithful Couple.
It's two trees that fused together.
We thought it appropriate to get a picture since it was our anniversary trip!

 

Next we decided to drive it a bit and hit up Tunnel View.
It's just what it says it is. It's a Tunney View to some of the bigger sights in the park.
The mountains: El Capitan, Half Dome, the Cathedrals.
 

 

We decided to keep going into Yosemite Valley to figure out where we would be starting out hike the next day!
It would be pitch black so the more we knew ahead of time the better. 

 

Lastly we decided to catch the sunset at Glacier Point. 

We realized that it wasn't the true sunset, but it was the sun going behind some mountains so it was casts some great shadows into the valley, where we had just come from, below.

 

Quite the view of Half Dome.

Happy Monday!