Ok... playing big time catch up - Napa Valley!

We left the redwoods and drove to Napa!  We planned to head to our first wine tasting on our way down through the valley to our bed and breakfast.  The first winery we wanted to visit was the Sterling Vineyards.  You get to ride a tram to the top of the vineyard, then once you get to the top you take a walking tour and sample wines along the way.  It was about 95 degrees out when we got there, so we didn't take too long walking around, we got our tastings and went to the tasting room to finish trying three other wines.  It was very pretty and the wine was very tasty!

Holding Julie's glass while she takes pictures

The view from the outside tasting area

Enjoying some bread in the inside tasting room

It only took us about an hour to do the tasting so we decided to head across the street and try another tasting at the Castello Di Amorosa.  The castle was very fun to walk around and explore in and then they had their tasting in the wine cellar!  The wine was good, but not the best.  After exploring we headed down the road to check into the Bed and Breakfast.

One of the "ancient" castles in Napa, opened in 2007!

The courtyard of the castle

We stayed at the Candlelight Inn, and it was very nice.  Our room was a little hot, but seeing how Napa was 90 something degrees, I guess it is understandable.  We were pretty excited to sleep in a bed and use a private bathroom after four days of camping and sleeping on the ground!  We showered and headed out to dinner in downtown Napa.  It was a cute little town and I can't really remember where we went, it wasn't anything that great.

The next day we made a reservation to go enjoy a couple's mud bath!  We decided it would be something fun and different to try so we headed up the road.  We were a little early for our appointment so we stopped by a farmer's market and bought some delicious cherries to snack on.  Then we embraced the mud!  It was pretty stinky mud because they used sulfur water from the hot springs, and we even floated in the mud!  After floating in mud for about fifteen minutes, we had a hot towel wrap and then we showered on were on our way for more wine! 

We first stopped at the Domain Chandon, which is a wonderful place for sparkling wines.  They had a bachelorette party or something going on in there plus it was on the tour bus route, so it was pretty loud.  But we found our way outside and enjoyed the lovely day with a little bit of quiet!  We next hit up Dean and Deluca for lunch, where we ate sandwiches and cookies on a little patch of grass with a lovely view.  Earlier at the B+B we made reservations for a small winery called Elyse, which almost no one goes too.  This was probably the best of all the wineries we went to over the weekend, it was small, the people were happy to tell us all about it, and of course we met people from Colorado while there! 

The view from our impromptu picnic

 

Enjoying the wine at Chandon

 

The best winery we got to go to, we ended up with a few bottles from this one!

After Napa, we made our way down the highway and found Aunt Carol's house near San Fran!!  We'll complete our catching up with our tales there! 

TWD: Baking with Julia - Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake

The recipe for today is named Nectarine Chiffon Upside Down Cake and it called for nectarines but it said you could really use any fruit you wanted to use.  So, I switched those up with peaches which are almost the same thing as nectarines to me, but they are what we had in the house.  I cut the recipe in half and had Mikey help me whip it all up.  The recipe called for a streusel in the middle of the cake, and I just decided to skip it altogether since I thought the cake would be enough.

The half recipe turned out very well, and I cooked it in a 9 inch square pan and it fit perfectly, although it did sink some in the middle before I flipped it.  We tried it as soon as I flipped it out and we both thought it was really good.  I think maybe peeling the fruit beforehand wouldn't have been a bad idea, but somehow the skin did not bother us much during our second and third and fourth bites!

I think I will definitely make the cake again, but I might skip the fruit and the streusel and just have some strawberries on the side.  I could replace the pound cake or the angel food cake with this chiffon cake, it was great!

You can check out the recipe on the hosts sites for this week The Little French Bakery or The Double Trouble Kitchen.

Here's our peach chiffon cake pictures... don't get too hungry!

Elk Prairie and Fern Grove

We figured we would try to finish up our posts about our trip to Washington, Oregon and California... yeah we are really behind.  But oh well!

Our last day of camping was spent in the southern part of the Redwood National Park.  There was a wonderful prairie with you guessed it, elk!

We heard from the very nice people who gave us a ride after our snake hike that we needed to head about twenty miles over to the ocean side of the Redwood Forest and check out the Fern Grove.

It turned out to be about a mile hike up through a canyon and then back around to the beginning.  It was worth the hour drive.

We also got to see the campground on the beach which looked really nice.  And we went for one last stroll on the beach before heading back to the campground.   Mikey even got to drive the car through two streams that crossed the road!

After the last night of camping we were off to Napa!  And a bed!

US Pro Cycling Challenge

Last weekend was the final stages of the US Pro Cycling Challenge, which is essentially the Tour of Colorado bike race.  The riders rode from Durango up to Breckenridge, over to the Springs and up to Denver, with a few stops along the way, all over the course of a week. 

Julie and I decided we could hit the stage in Colorado Springs, and then our friend Brian talked us into going up to Boulder for the stage there the next day.  Turned out to be awesome! 

Unfortunately I was the only one who made it to the Colorado Springs stage on time.  The race got there about an hour earlier than the website said that they would.  This meant that Bill and Debbie, Julie and our friends Brian and Kim all missed the good parts.  It also meant that I didn't have time to get my camera ready, so all I have are some small cell phone pictures.  But I got to see them do their final couple laps in Colorado Springs, and I stood right next to the stage where they handed out the jerseys, it was awesome. 

The finish line with the TV camera

The race leader at the time, Tejay Van Garderen, getting his yellow jersey

The next day was Saturday, so that meant Julie and I were both off, so there would be no missing it this time!  We headed up to Boulder with a plan to get there for lunch, then find the cyclists in town when they came through.  Because the course that day had them riding through Boulder twice, we actually caught them in the morning right when we started lunch.  We heard them on the road right next to us, so we jumped out and caught the peloton right as they rode by.  It was so quick we didn't have time to get our cowbells or cameras out! 

After some debating, Julie talked me into going to the final climb of the day, called Flagstaff mountain.  We brought our bikes to Boulder to ride around on, which was a great choice, because we were able to make the 4 mile ride quite quickly, despite the fact that most of it was uphill.  At the bottom of the mountain, we actually ran into Brian and some of his friends, so we said hi and went to find a spot on the mountain.  We found one under a tree, with some shade, and waited for the riders to come back. 

Boy did they ever!  We chose a great spot because the riders rode right next to us, I could have reached out my hand and helped any of them change gears!  It was quite amazing!  The crowds only got better as the riders rode up the hill, making a wall of people and noise for about 3 miles.  Good job Colorado!  We had a blast, and we definitely plan on going again next year!

There were people streaming up for a few hours straight

Me helping Julie get her camera ready!

Jens Voigt screaming at his legs to get him up the hill!

Big George Hincapie leading the team BMC train up the hill

Tejay Van Garderen in yellow, he lost the lead on this stage

The hill got steep, some folks needed a push I guess

The slower cyclists had a chance to enjoy the crowd a bit

TWD: Baking with Julia - Popovers

This is my first time making popovers and I am not sure I will be trying them again.  The outside was pretty crunchy and the insides were a bit too egg-y for my liking!  Maybe, if I cooked them at a lower temperature to start with and then a longer amount of time at the second lower temperature, that would make them more to my liking.  You have to cook them at 425 for 25 minutes, which I assume is what makes them pop, and then cook them for 15-20 more minutes at a lower temperature.  Maybe some day I might try them again, they were really easy to whip up.  Well here are a few pictures, and if you want to check out the recipe, the hosts were Paula and Amy.

TWD: Baking with Julia - Blueberry Nectarine Pie

Finally I am getting back into baking along with the group... it's been a bit of a hectic summer... what with fires and all...  anyways...  this weeks recipe was Blueberry Nectarine Pie and I just couldn't pass up making it!  Hopefully Mikey is up for eating it!  The hosts for this week's recipe were Hilary from manchego's kitchen and Liz from that skinny chick can bake.

First it started out with cooking half the fruit with some sugar and flour till the juices got thick.  Then the recipe called for half the pie crust recipe listed in the book, I might have cheated a little and used a pre-made pie crust, don't tell!  The Olympics are on, I can't peel myself away.  So, back to the fruit, I cooked half of it and then combined it with the remaining half of fruit that was not cooked.  After that I just had to wait for it to cool and then pour it in the pie crust.  After pouring it in the crust, I added a few pieces of butter and covered it with another crust and into the oven!  It is currently resting, so here are my pictures minus a picture of what it looks like cut up, hopefully it's not too juicy.   I'm sure we will get through eating it even if it's soupy!

The Redwoods

We left Oregon pretty quick the next morning, because we really wanted to get to the Redwoods and check out the awesome trees.  Our first camping spot was in Jedediah Smith State Park, which houses a large chunk of the Redwoods.  Their jewel of their park is called Stout Grove, because it has some of the biggest Redwoods around apparently.

The good news for us is that the road to the trailhead was closed, which made it about a 1/2 mile walk to get to the trailhead from the nearest parking.  This of course completely turned off most of the other travelers in the park, so we pretty much had the grove to ourselves, free to wander and enjoy it in peace. 

There was a lot of gazing up on this hike

Why yes, we are both wearing flannel!

We went back to camp and walked around there for a little bit, enjoying another wonderful campsite.  We had some dinner and went to sleep.  Unfortunately the ground was kind of wet, so it got our tent and sleeping bags a bit wet too, but it was well worth it!

A roadside attraction of Paul Bunyan got us to stop!

The next day we drove down the coast a bit to find our next hiking trail, called the Coastal Trail, we hooked up with it at Yurok Loop, and we wanted to hike down to the mouth of the Klamath River.  The first few miles were exceptional, with great views and beautiful trees and ferns to walk through.  We heard some seals barking down the hill from us, but couldn't see them.  The barks sounded so much like dogs we thought we were coming up to a trailhead with lots of people!  Unfortunately for us, the trail started to open up a bit and once it got exposed to the Sun, the snakes decided to sun themselves on the trail with us.  We probably saw 15-20 gardener snakes of all sizes.  The problem was we didn't know that they were gardeners at the time, so we were worried that they might be poisonous.  This led us to clapping and singing to try to warn them so they got out of our way, which was actually kind of effective.  We did pass by a beach along the way and then we made it all the way to the Klamath River.

The mouth of the Klamath River

Our plan was to hike back the way that we came, however with the all the snakes, we decided to hitch a ride.  Julie asked one couple for a ride, and they were happy to take up back up the road.  They turned out to be fellow Coloradans taking a trip very similar to ours.  Thanks for the ride guys!!!