Vermont - Cheese trail trip

Stephen and I had this phenomenal cheese at a wine and cheese festival in Connecticut from Lake Champlain, Vermont - and of course Cabot in Vermont - then in Houston this past weekend, I looked through the Wine Spectator Cheese list and of course there were more VT cheeses in there... So, we decided to explore some Vermont cheeses this weekend. We started with the Grafton Cheddar in Brattleboro - well, actually it is based in Grafton, but it has opened a wine and cheese store in Brattleboro. I got some Christmas gifts - but I think I am going to have to go back for more =) Eventually, we got to Cabot - following the TomTom directions up some 1.5 lane roads to get there...

It was CRAZY crowded!!! but the video was cool, and more christmas gifts were found. The dogs got a large jumbone and when we got back to the car were curled up in their beds...

Then we programmed in the hotel in Burlington and Stephen looked at me when it said "Do you want to avoid unpaved roads?" and we thought back to San Francisco - and the toll road avoidance that cost 3 extra hours and hit "No" to indicate we would brave unpaved roads on the rainy, foggy, Vermont Saturday... Then we ended up in a cemetary, on a grass path - exactly where the TomTom wanted us to be...

Stephen decided that before we repeated the Napa off-road experience, we should turn around and head back to civilization - the paved road path was going to take 6 extra minutes... So, off on the paved alternate route we headed! Tomorrow, we may try to hit the Magic Hat #9 Brewery, and a couple more creameries.

Rest in Peace - Grannie - Juanita M. Vinson (9/9/2009)

My grandmother passed away on Sept. 9th, 2009. She had three years more than the doctors thought she was going to have. She always had sugar for her grandchildren - and fried okra, and creamed corn, and pies. I am thankful that she is no longer in pain. I will miss the love that she always had for her family and the sugar (emotional and real) that she was always ready to give.

______________________________

Juanita Melton Vinson, Houston, Tx.

1924 - 2009

Juanita Vinson

Juanita Melton Vinson, age 84, of Houston, TX, formerly of Selma, died Wednesday September 9, 2009.
She was preceded in death by her husband whom she married on February 26, 1944 in Dallas, TX, James Woodrow Vinson, who died on November 10, 1999. Also preceding her in death is her grandmother and grandfather, Media Ophelia Southern Smith and Zacariah Smith, her mother and father, Docia Lee Smith Melton Leachman and Boyce LaRue Melton.
Survivors include her son, James Woodrow Vinson, Jr. and wife Alice of Houston, TX; granddaughter, Elizabeth Florence Vinson of Westfield, CT; grandson, James Lester Vinson and his wife Stephanie Green Vinson of San Diego, CA; great-grandson, William “Liam” Vinson, and her nieces Barbara Bevans Griffin of Vidor, TX and Beverly Bevans Parks of West Monroe, LA.
Juanita was born September 29, 1924 in Chatham, Louisiana. She served eighteen years as Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Dallas County Health Department where she retired in 1988. She was the past state president of Alabama Business and Professional Women’s Association, a Member of West End Baptist Church Sunshine Class and a volunteer Coordinator for the American Cancer Society.
Graveside services will be held Saturday September 12, 2009 at 3:00 p.m. at New Live Oak Cemetery with Lawrence Brown-Service Funeral Home directing. The family will receive friends from 9-11 a.m. Saturday September 11, 2009 at the funeral home.
Please visit http://www.lawrencebrownservice.com to make online condolences to the family.

Busy Summer - transitioning to fall

Well, I never got the California Old Faithful pictures posted - but it exists, we went and it blew several times while we were there.
http://www.oldfaithfulgeyser.com/

We saw the goats and roses, it was fun.

The I got home and went to Florida for work for a month. Stayed there til the tornado came through Wethersfield.




Now fall is coming in like a Lion - temperatures are dropping and leaves are changing.

Favorite Wine Tasting Experience

It was amazing - all the beautiful places and friendly faces in Napa valley. I took a few pictures of some of the places we went - and the things that we did...

It was interesting to taste Opus One (a vineyard/winery that makes only one wine, but makes one phenomenal wine), but the high brow atmosphere was not as enjoyable as the wine was....


Grgich Hills makes phenomenal wine, and has one of each of the bottle sizes in the tasting room - it was interesting to see a Nebuknezzar, or Balthazar bottle.... the tasting room was similar to many in Connecticut or Temecula - a bar around the room and people waiting to get to the bar for a tasting... the Fume Blanc was my favorite white wine I tasted.


Mumm was fun - Alice did a blind tasting... Brian and Alice had picked a tasting of different vintage champagnes.... Alice finished off most of their tasting having to "revisit" the glasses to be confident in the one that she had previously identified as her favorite... SOoooo... Later at Duckhorn - Brian decided he needed to do a blind tasting of the tastey reds that we were trying... He polished off most of the glasses at this tasting... the blind taste test was a phenomenal scheme to get most of a tasting all to yourself...


In the end of our exploring on our own, my favorite tasting experiences were the smaller vineyards that required reservations. Although, I think my most favorite experience was at Paraduxx - where we didn't exactly have a reservation... After our tasting at Duckhorn (oh, and I need Stephen to post the Almond recipie - I didn't bring that to Florida with me), our host suggested that we visit Paraduxx, and she gave us 2 complementary tastings. The tasting area was outside on a crushed stone patio under large shade trees. Oh and the wine was wonderful! Parajaxx - Rose' and three vintages of Paraduxx 2004, 2005, 2006. The 2004 was phenomenal, 2005 was interesting... 2006 will be great next year!


So, we will complete the list, but also keep our eyes out for other interesting small vineyards with spectacular tasting experiences. =)

Napa Wine Tasting

There are somewhere close to 500 vineyards/wineries in Napa Valley... So, I looked for some help in down-selecting to the ones we ought to really try and visit. I read books and looked online, but there were so many that were recommended. Then I found out that a guy I work with lived in the area for many years. He gave me a list of ~22 to visit, and Jonathan Edwards Winery had a suggestion list with a couple more...

The most important thing that we found was the Preiser Key - free magazine, with "to scale" maps and every winery listed and identified as open to the public, requiring reservations, private... It also had most of the restaurants!

Visited May 2009:

• Stag's Leap Wine Cellars
• Robert Mondavi
• Opus One
• Cakebread Cellars
• Mumm Napa Valley
• Beaulieu Vineyard
• Duckhorn
• Paraduxx
• Frog's Leap
• Grgich Hills
  
• Beringer Vineyard
• Chappellet
• Flora Springs
• Cardinale

Yet to Visit:

• Hess Collection
• Silverado Vineyard
• Robert Sinskey
• Far Niente Winery
• Groth Vineyard
• Franciscan Oakville Estate
• Caymus Vineyard
• Heitz Cellars
• Joseph Phelps Vineyard
• Merryvale Napa Valley
• Rombauer Vineyard
• Clos du Val Wine Co
• Mayacamas Vineyard
• Trefethen Vineyard - Kitchen stadium
• Carneros
• Del Gatto Caves

TomTom tourism

I do not understand the TomTom's logic for directing travel... it seems that there is some logic setting so that the TomTom avoids left turns... but it has generally gotten us where we were trying to go.... So, we left the parking garage in San Francisco, and programed the TomTom for our next destination. It directed us on some random path - away from the Bay Bridge (which we knew we needed to get to)... but we trusted that it would get us there eventually...

We turned onto a street that appeared to go straight up... Stephen says I hope we don't have to go to the top of this hill... Of course we did...

At the top of the hill we could see the Bay Bridge and water... At the stop sign the TomTom directed us to turn right - and OMG! The Transamerica Building - front and center!!!! YAY!

Seems like the GPS needs to have an option to drive you optimum intersections for photo ops. =)

One last shot.... Transamerica Building

We spent several days in Napa tasting wine - I'll write about that later (didn't take many pictures since we were busy tasting). After 4 days of tasting, we needed a break, so we went back to San Francisco to find Dim Sum. Since our flight was very early, we would be coming across the bay bridge in the dark... so heading into San Francisco for Dim Sum was my last chance to get a picture of the elusive Transamerica building...

So, we got on the Bay Bridge and I started taking pictures... but the building kept dodging behind the neighboring buildings (note the enormous cruise ship docked).

We got all the way across the bridge and I thought, "Well, rats, no good pictures...oh well."

So, we went to Chinatown and wandered around. Found a Dim Sum Buffet, but that was no good for Stephen, so we back-tracked to a place that looked more like the Golden Pearl in Boston. The Dim Sum was good - but no custard pies... =(

Then we headed back to Napa - and let the TomTom take us home...

Science Center @ Golden Gate Bridge Park (Day2 SF)

The second day in San Francisco we headed out to find the Science Center and Golden Gate Bridge. This time we put the Golden Gate Park into the TomTom AND looked at some maps before we hit the road.

The Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful - and amazing.







The Golden Gate Park was interesting... I don't know what they did to their trees - they looked pretty weird. There is an art museum on one side and a science center on the other. The Science center was recommended in several of the tourist books - it is an aquarium/natural science center - lots of fish and critters, and dioramas to show the larger critters. The most amazing thing was the rain forest globe. There was a spiral walkway around the outer edge of the globe - and you walked from the forest floor to the canopy, then took an elevator down to below the pond at the bottom of the rain forest into the primary aquarium area.

We didn't make it to Ghiradelli Square, or ride a trolley car, or walk out on the Golden Gate Bridge, but we had fun and are going to have to come back some day... Brian and Alice were waiting for us at the airport. As we got back to the airport, there was another display of the crazy fog fingers in the hills of San Francisco...

Vanity Plates and other Odd things in San Fran.

When I visited San Diego, I learned about California vanity plates... In San Francisco, we saw a few noteworthy plates... Oh and this contest that we thought might be a good fit for anyone who might have practiced - or maybe just been suggested in a misguided Mad Lib a couple of years ago...

And we saw a few "trolley cars", but mostly we saw these electric buses running on all the cables. It was crazy, these buses with the long connections to the cables... We didn't ride the buses, but all the cables over the road were strange...

San Francisco first night - Mets vs. Giants

I appreciate that Stephen enjoys baseball - and that he humors my desire to visit ballparks - even when the teams playing are not my Astros or his Tigers... So, I checked the Giants and the Athletics. The Athletics were in Detroit playing the Tigers - but the Giants were in town! So, we programed the TomTom to take us to AT&T park and had much better success arriving at the desired destination! It took us right to the front door - but the parking situation is very similar to Houston - there is not a dedicated parking lot, you just have to hunt around and find your favorite $20 parking lot...

We walked up to the ticket window after parking our car and bought row 8 tickets just past first base. Thursday night with no give aways is not a popular night to head to the ballpark.

The ballpark is beautiful, but in mid-May it is a bit chilly in the evening, which may be why there was only one lonely kayaker - we didn't see any balls go over the wall.

I was a bit shocked at the ball boy - what a wonderful retirement plan. =)

First Days in San Francisco - Before Ferry Building

Our first couple days in San Francisco were full of fun and adventure - but not winding Lombard St. or Cable Cars... We wanted to go to the Science Center. So, we looked it up in the TomTom and set off for downtown. The TomTom has gotten us many places successfully - not so much this time... well, it wasn't the TomTom's fault... the science center moved last fall - and relocated to the Golden Gate Park. This fact was clearly stated in several of my guide books, but I figured the TomTom would know that...

Oh well, we ended up in a downtown parking garage, and then Ellen from Wine and Dine Tours called to talk to me about our tour - and she suggested the Ferry Building - which was just a short 10 blocks away (maybe not 10, but it wasn't as close as we thought).

So, our first day in San Francisco we went to the Ferry Building - which is an indoor gourmet market. It was amazing - mushroom store, olive oil store, cheese store, wine store, etc., etc., etc. The coolest thing I saw was a mini mushroom farm at the mushroom store! Grow your own shiitake or tree oyster mushrooms!

Springtime in Connecticut

I guess I missed the dogwood blooms last week - we had lots of wind and rain and the blooms went away pretty fast... but I captured the daffodils and some bleeding hearts - and the peonies are going to be enormous this year - hope I get to see some of them!

Magnolia Grill - Charleston, SC

On my last day in SC, I departed from Charleston. Stephanie found a restaurant to have brunch - Magnolia Grill. It was excellent http://www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com/ ! Everyone had grits - except me, I had rum soaked bananas!

Liam was excellent at brunch - and very interested in eating all of his dad's grits and gravy!