the WINE COUNTRY

On Monday morning, we headed to the wine country with Jordan & Kelci. We had planned to get to the first winery around 10:30, but the highway we were on shut down with no warning, which made us 2 hours delayed. We just sat in traffic, not moving, for 2 hours...finally we made it to Napa. Since we weren't saying in Napa, we wanted to at least see the town and go to a few wineries we had heard about. We had a wonderful lunch (the heirloom tomatoes were our favorite) then headed to the next winery. Kelci and I enjoyed eating the grapes right off the vine. They were so sweet - just a few weeks away from being picked - but each grape is small and has 2-3 seeds. The views from the tops of the mountains were incredible and the amount of vineyards was amazing. Here are a few pictures from our wine country adventures...
We had a wonderful dinner in Healdsburg (town where we stayed) at ZIN our first night there. The food was excellent and so fresh. Again, we ordered some heirloom tomatoes!! Heirloom tomatoes are those funny shaped, different colored tomatoes that are only in season a few months a year. They are much harder to find in TX but in CA they are plentiful and we took full advantage of eating them as often as possible. If you don't like tomatoes, I think you would love these anyway. They are just so yummy!!

One of my favorite wineries we visited was Iron Horse. I love sparkling wine and that is what they specialize in. Once again, incredible views!!
The 4 of us after our tasting of sparkling wines...Jordan bought a bottle for us to enjoy back at our hotel because we all loved it so much!
We also had a picnic at one of the wineries and below is a picture of the view we had as we sat on the grass and ate our lunch. We went to a local grocery store and loaded up on cheese, meat, bread, fruit and once again, heirloom tomatoes. I thought Jordan was going to try and buy out the grocery store so he could bring some tomatoes back with him. We borrowed a picnic basket and blanket from our hotel and had a great, relaxing time eating our lunch and drinking some lovely wine.


This is a picture of the view from the putting green at our Bed & Breakfast we stayed at. It was beautiful and we absolutely loved where we stayed. I don't think we'll ever stay anywhere else when we go to the wine country. We really liked staying in Healdsburg and going to a lot of the small, boutique wineries because they weren't crowded with tourists and the wines are only available from the winery.
This is the back our of the B & B. We had separate rooms but would sit out on the back balcony every night. It did get pretty cold at night, but we had robes and blankets provided by the hotel to bundle up with. During the day it would get pretty hot...we had PERFECT weather!!

Our last night in Healdsburg, we went to dinner at Willi's Seafood & Raw Bar and had so much fun celebrating our trip but were also sad our vacation had come come an end. We are so blessed to have the Brocks in our life and can't wait to go on our next trip together.