More Wine Tasting

We are still in Buellton, California and will be here for another week before heading back to Southern California for Christmas.  Even though this is one of the most expensive RV parks we have ever stayed in we decided to stay another week as the area is beautiful and there are some things we want to do.

Since my last posting we traveled to Goleta which is about 20 miles south of us to meet up with Fran’s cousin.  We spent the afternoon with her and had a great time.  It also gave us the chance to check out a couple of state parks we may stop at in January when we work our way back north in California.  We really liked El Capitan State Park as they had a few really nice ocean view sites.  The drawback is there are no hook-ups and no reservations.  The hook-ups are not a problem for us for a few days and hopefully in January during the week it will not be a problem to get a site for a couple of nights.

When we resided in Naperville we belong to a wine group with 6 other couples.  We met about 6 times a year and had a great time tasting wines.  This past weekend was the annual Christmas tasting, which is always one of the special events for the group.  Obviously we missed it but were with our friends in spirit and they were kind enough to call us at 2:30am (central time) to tell us how much this missed us!  So, since we missed the Christmas tasting we have been continuing our wine tasting activities in this area and have not been disappointed.

In the last posting I mentioned our first outing in tasting.  Yesterday and today we did some additional exploring.   On Tuesday we went to Los Olivos which is about 10 miles from here. This is a quaint little town about two blocks long that has a few restaurants, a few businesses and many, many tasting rooms.  So, you park your car and just walk the town and taste wines!  What could be better.

Many of the tasting rooms were not open during the week so we ended up doing two and then having lunch (outdoors!!!!).   We tasted at Daniel Gehrs, www.danielgehrswines.com.  Not that impressed with the wines but had a great time with the person serving us.

We had a free tasting card for Epiphany Winery, which was next door, so we went there,http://www.epiphanycellars.com/. Their wines were good and we were impressed with their Rousanne (a white wine). 

Two tastings was enough for us as each allowed us to taste more than was on the list, but neither waived the tasting fee for a purchase.  So, lunch was in order.  We ended up at a great sandwich place with outdoor tables, Panino’s, http://paninorestaurants.com/.  It was a very nice fall day.

Today we decided to drive to Lompoc which is about 20 miles west of us.  On the way we took one road to stop at Sanford winery, www.sanfordwinery.com.  This is a wine we had tried a few years ago on a recommendation and were very pleased with it.  The tasting was outstanding!  The problem is their wines are pretty expensive, for our tastes ($40 to $70).  Fortunately the server was very generous in the pours and allowed us to taste other wines not on the list.  After visiting Lompoc we took Highway 246 back into Buellton and stopped at two wineries that were next to each other.  The first was Babcock, www.babcockwinery.com.  Their wines were very good, but again the price was a little steep.  The winery next door was Melville, www.melvillewinery.com.  This winery had great wines and their price point was much better, $20 to $40.  We had a great time at this winery.  Again, neither Babcock or Melville waived the tasting fee for a purchase.  This is a real issue with me!

Since we are here for a another week I am sure we will do more wine tasting.  This is a beautiful area and the wines are great.

To our wine group friends.  You have to make this a trip for the group.  You could stay in Solvang and then do wine tasting in the area. There are many great restaurants and many wines to taste. Plus, Santa Barbara is only 30 miles away.  We are available most of January and February if you would like to escape the Chicago winter. 

Wine Tasting 101

Since my last post we have moved to Buellton, California.  This a few hours north of Los Angeles in Central California.  The town is famous for Andersons Pea Soup and being the off ramp to Solvang, a touristy Danish community.

We have been to this area many times over the years to stop at Andersons and to visit Solvang.  One thing we have never done is to tour the wine country that is in this area.  This area is known for its Pinot Noir’s and Syrah’s. 

We have been wine tasting in Napa, California about 6 times over the years and these have generally been the weekend getaways when we lived in the area or when we travelled here with friends.  With these visits it is always busy and you can barely find a place to stand in the tasting area. Since we have begun “Life on the Road” we now have the luxury of visiting wineries during the week, off peak.  This has been very enjoyable for a variety of reasons.  First is that the staff can spend more time with you to talk about the wine, the winery and other topics.  Next, they are more willing to give you tastes of other wines not on their tasting list and lastly they are more willing to waive the tasting fee

Most tasting rooms have gone to charging to taste their wines.  I have no problem with this as they are going through a significant amount of wine, especially on the weekends, and should be able to recoup their cost.  Many will waive the tasting fee if you buy wine while you are there or sign up for their wine club.  To me that is very appropriate. 

Since we started" “Life on the Road”, we have done a significant amount of wine tasting.  We have been through the wine regions in Oregon, Washington, Canada and now Central California.  I would like to let you know what we have learned regarding wine tasting.

First,  go during the week.  This has been the most fun for us.   Generally we are the only ones in the tasting room and the staff person is able to spend more time with you and if you express interest in wines not on the tasting list they are more agreeable to let you try them.

Second, I have adopted a plan of buying at least one bottle of wine at each winery (if I like one of course).  When you buy a bottle they most likely will waive the tasting fee.  Why not get a bottle of wine out of the tasting plus the tasting rather than just paying for the tasting.

Also we have found the majority of wineries are more generous with their “pours” for the tasting when you go during the week.  Because of this (as we hate to waste wine) we limit our number of tasting to 4 or 5 so we can make it back to our RV.

For this trip here is an illustration of my comments above.

Our first stop was the Firestone Winery,  www.firestonewine.com/.  They had an outstanding tasting room, premium wines and very friendly staff.  We enjoyed their Pinot Noir and Cab Franc, which were premium priced.  We were disappointed that they did not waive the $15 tasting fee for our purchase.  Their wines were great and the experience was great, but if I buy wine after tasting it I think the fee should be waived.

Next up was Fess Parker Winery,  www.fessparker.com/,  yes that Fess Parker (aka: Daniel Boone).  We have tasted his wines before at a wine dinner and were impressed.  The winery was outstanding and the person serving us was very enjoyable.  I expressed my interest in wines not on the tasting list and he allowed us to taste them, plus some recommendations he had.  The tasting is supposed to be 6 wines and we tasted 12.   The fee was waived if we opted not to keep the glass, plus we did buy a couple of bottles.  They have an outstanding Viognier.

Next up was Zaca Mesa Winery,  www.zacamesa.com/.  Another great tasting room but the staff was not as enjoyable.  They have a great Syrah and we bought a couple of bottles and they did not waive the tasting fee.

Last up was Cambria Winery, cambriawines.com/.  This has been one of our favorite wines for years.  We were a club member for a number of years.  They have a great Chardonnay and Pinot Noir so I was excited to be able to visit the winery.  I told them I was a previous club member but they did not waive the tasting fee even with a wine purchase. 

I was pleased with the tastings we did today but very disappointed in these wineries for not waiving the tasting fee. However, the tasting experience was more pleasant with no crowd.

Hemet, California

We left the San Diego area on Wednesday of last week and drove about 80 miles north and west to Hemet, California to spend Thanksgiving as Fran’s brother lives nearby in Perris (or P-town as he calls it).  As this area is a snowbird and retiree destination the RV parks are the huge mega-park resort types, which also means they are a little more costly than we are used to.  I picked the Golden Village Palms RV park as it got very good reviews and they offered a decent weekly rate and a row of pull-thru sites that kept you out of the spaces where the seasonal and year round residents lived.  It is a HUGE park and has many amenities and activities.  It is a 55+ park (so I now qualify) but they never asked me to prove my age!!

Here is a map of the park so you can get an idea of how huge it is (something like a 1000 spaces).

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Fran’s brother and niece.  On Friday her brother took us to Riverside to view the lighting ceremony at the Mission Inn.  This is a historic hotel in downtown Riverside that started a Festival of Lights 15 years ago.  The festival starts with a lighting of the lights that adorn the hotel (something like 3 million lights).  Following the lighting ceremony they shoot off fireworks from the roof of the hotel. 

Here are some pictures of the hotel before the lights are on.

Here are some after the lights are lit

Sorry, it was difficult to get good pictures in the dark.  It was a very enjoyable evening.

Football watching on the weekend (for me), a visit with my parents and then a visit to Temecula will finish out this stop in Southern California.  We are then on to the Solvang area for a week or two of wine tasting and other adventures then back to Southern California for Christmas and New Years.

9 Month Update

We complete nine months of Life on the Road this week while we are in the San Diego area.  Since my last post we did a couple of days of sight seeing here in San Diego.  On Thursday we went to downtown San Diego to walk around Seaport Village, Horton Plaza and surrounding areas.  We had a great lunch at a restaurant in Seaport Village with outdoor seating near the water.

From our table we could see the North Island Navy base which is where the aircraft carriers park when in port.  One was in port, the Carl Vinson, which was where a college basketball game was held on Veteran’s Day.

We took a walk over to where the aircraft carrier Midway is berthed and took some pictures of statues they have on the “Greatest Generation Walk”.

Memorial to the U.S. San Diego

Midway

Tribute to Bob Hope

Huge statue of the famous Life magazine photo

As we walked further along the waterfront we found out that the America’s Cup World Series boat race is being held this weekend in the bay between Coronado and San Diego.  These are not the yacht type racing boats but rather catamarans.  As we arrived they were just getting ready to start the first race. 

We then proceeded to walk to Horton Plaza and my old office (Federal Building) when we came across a protest march for the Occupy Wall Street group.

On Friday the weather was colder and overcast so it dampened our plans for Balboa Park.  We still went to the park and rode our bikes around but it did get fairly cold so we packed up the bikes and went to Old Town for lunch and a pitcher of margaritas to warm us up and to forget the cold!

We finished the day by taking a drive up the coast to see our old neighborhood in Oceanside.  We lived there for about 3 years in the mid-80’s.  As could be expected the area had gotten very busy and the neighborhood had begun somewhat rundown.

Here is our updated map for our 9 month anniversary

Santee, California

It is moving day for us.  We left Lake Havasu City and drove about 300 miles to Santee, California, which is just south and east of San Diego.  Before I go more into Santee, let me tell you about the drive here.  The route I chose was to get back to Interstate 10 at Quartzite and then drive west to Blythe and pick up Highway 78 to cut across California diagonally to hook up with Interstate 8 and proceed into the San Diego area.  This part of Arizona and California is pretty much the same, nothing, just desert.  However the rock formations were unusual.  As we went through the smaller hills they were actually just huge piles of boulders.  Think of a small pile of stones you see on the ground and multiple that so that the pile rises to a 1000 feet.  These rocks were HUGE and in HUGE mounds.  I am not a geologist but if I had to speculate I would say these were made from a huge explosion that created a crater and then threw the debris.  They were just amazing. 

Next up was an interesting set of hills that definitely looked man made and surrounding these hills was a chain link fence topped with razor wire.  What is going on here?  A quick check of Google revealed the area is a gold mine.  Something like the second largest gold mine in the US.

Next up as we approached Brawley, California is a town called Glamis.  Now there is no real town here that we could see, but what is here is miles and miles of sand dunes and huge flattened areas for RV’s.  This is an off roaders paradise and you could see it by all the tire tracks in the sand.  It would be a blast to take an ATV or dune buggy and drive around on these.  To look at these dunes go to Google Maps and search on Glamis, CA.  This should bring up a map of highway 78.  The dunes are below Highway 78 on the screen.  If you scroll around you can see how far they go.  There are two huge RV storage lots at either end of the dunes with hundreds of RV’s being stored.  I am guessing the off roaders leave their RV’s in storage then just drive out towing their off road vehicles and then go pick up their RV to camp for the weekend. 

Ok, moving on to Santee, CA.  I picked this town as it had the nicest rated campground that was reasonably priced in the San Diego area.  The ones nearer the city received poor reviews as being very cramped, run down and expensive.  We do have a little drive to get to the city but I think it is worth the drive to stay in such a nice campground.  This campground, Santee Lakes, is owned by the water district and it is a combination park area, with a series of small lakes, and a 300 site campground.  The sites are level, well spaced and the park is very nicely maintained.  You can take a look at it at www.santeelakes.com.  If you look at the campground map we are in space 281.

Here are a couple of pictures

We are here for a week and will be doing some sightseeing as it has been a few years since either of us has been in the San Diego area.

London Bridge

As I mentioned in my last post the London Bridge was purchased and moved to Lake Havasu City many years ago as a tourist draw.  Today we took a bike ride over to the bridge to get some pictures.  It appears they dug out a small channel to make an island in the lake and then placed the bridge on the rode to the island.  On the island near the bridge are restaurants and shops with English names and themes.  I took a snapshot from Google Maps so you can see where the bridge is.  On the picture below it is right near the Pin marked A.

Here are some pictures we took of the bridge.

To make sure we can check off “been there, done that”!

On our ride back I noticed a propane truck driving by us on the road and started laughing at the name of the company, Passmore Gas.  I was not quick enough to snap a picture of the truck so I went online and put the name in Google and verified that it is a local company and the family that owns it is named Passmore.  I guess it was destiny they would own a gas company.  I was able to find a picture online of one of their tanks, but the truck picture was copyrighted.

I was also not able to get a picture of a Roadrunner bird that was in the RV park office when we arrived.  The park owner said the bird showed up one day in the office when the door was open and perched itself on the counter.  It comes by when the door is open and runs around the office.  It does get a little nervous around people but still it was amazing to see this bird hopping around the office.

It is always an adventure!

Lake Havasu City, AZ

We left noisy Tempe and are making our way to California.  We decided to stop in Lake Havasu City, AZ as it is in the general direction we are going and neither of us had ever been.  We both grew up in Southern California and can remember our friends always talking about Lake Havasu and going there with friends and family for weekends to boat on the river.  Since we were not boaters we just never bothered.  I can remember years ago the big news story when the town here bought the London Bridge and brought it over here as a tourist attraction for the area and all the jokes that came with it.  So, with all that past and really no travel plan, why not stop.

We arrived yesterday afternoon and have not really checked out the area.  Best we can tell so far is that there is not that much to do unless you are into water sports.  The desert views are spectacular and the sunsets are great.  Our RV park is adequate, nothing special, but it is on a little hill so it does have some nice views.  The downside is that the spaces are close together.  Here are some pictures I took from the RV park.

Our rig (the one in front of the red truck).

RV park

View of the lake and mountains

Sunset

Since arriving in Arizona it has been interesting to see the RV culture here as this state is one of the destinations for snowbirds.  There are RV parks everywhere and they are large.  One of the biggest destination areas is Quartzite, Arizona.  It is at the junction of Interstate 10 and Highway 95.  The town is in the middle of nowhere but supposedly it becomes a bustling city of over 100,000 during the winter.  We had driven by it a few years  back when driving from Phoenix to Los Angeles and was wondering what all the parking lots were (actually RV parks).  At that time they were empty because it was the off season.  Now we went through it on our way to Lake Havasu and it is really picking up.  There are RV’s everywhere.  We saw many RV’ers coming south on Highway 95 as we made our way to Lake Havasu.  Their license plates indicated they were coming from Oregon and Washington.  Many RV’ers choose to boondock, meaning they park on open land and have no hookups.  You will be driving on the road and see a few off in the distance.  To cater to these boondockers we noticed a business in town that allows you to drive your RV in and buy water to fill the tanks and a dump station to dump your waste tanks.  Then it is back out to the desert.

We had a great time in Tempe visiting with our daughter.  We had not seen her since she and her fiancé visited us in February just before we left for our “Life on the Road”.