Our Mid Life Crisis Trip (The Final Chapter [Thank God, right?] )

Napa Valley... Here We Come

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 You guessed it... Napa Valley won! We started out over a hill that led out of the Santa Rosa Valley. It started to get very rural. Uncle John told us to take Calistoga Road until we saw San Alina Road. That means Saint Helena in Uncle John language (we love his accent... When he gave me directions to come to his house, he told me to turn on "Pindia!" road. That means "Pythian" in Uncle John language). Forgive me for getting off the subject here but we had the same thing going with my mom (his sister Nancy). Our whole family still loves imitating her accent. That was one of the finer points in her (and Uncle John's) personality. We love that Uncle John!

Well we found Saint Helena. It followed a long winding, rural road that was lined with moss covered trees. This was a beautiful drive. When we got into town, we asked around a bit and discovered that not only was there a candle factory and The CIA, but we were in the midst of some of the best grape (wine) growing territory in the country, the Napa Valley. It was very beautiful. We stopped at the Chamber of Commerce and got some information and directions to the places we wanted to visit.

 

Our first stop was the Hurd Beeswax Candle Factory. This came highly recommended by Uncle John and Addie. We should have taken them with us. It was nice. The drive there though was a bit treacherous. This place uses no molds, but has a group of very talented artisans that put these candles together by hand and they are beautiful and unique. They made these ribbon twisted candles, candles in the shape of snowmen, flowers, lighthouses, etc. Beautiful stuff.

 

 

 

From there we went for lunch at The CIA. The CIA took over a gigantic building that was originally part of The Christian Brother's Winery. The building was to be condemned because it did not meet earthquake standards. I can tell that it would have been one of the last places I would want to be in the event of an earthquake. It is very large and there a large stones as part of the architecture.

When we got there and started for lunch, they told us that a tour was only 5 minutes off so we decided to take it... $3.00 bucks each, not bad. We met with a tall lanky guy named Steve and another vacationing couple and he took us all over the building. We saw old wine barrels twice as tall as the tallest of us. He took us into the kitchen classes. There are some major kitchens going on here. They had a chef that specializes in wedding cakes teaching class. Another class was baking cookies and we got to try some. It was a lot of fun just going through there.


After our tour, we went through the gift shop and looked at cooking stuff. Naturally, Chris was in heaven and naturally, she didn't spend a penny. That's just how she is (lucky for me). We had fun looking. We also got to go out to their herb garden and smell and sample some of the herbs that they grow right there. It was some type of lemon herb that he had us sample. Chris also stole a leaf of some rosemary.

At lunch, I asked what "Roasted Squab" was and the waitress told me that it was baby pigeon. I said, "I'll take it!" I figured that if I ever was going to eat a pigeon, the best place to try it was here. It was very good... a mix between filet mignon and liver. I liked it. Chris ordered Red Snapper. I didn't get to taste too much of it so it must have been very good. haha. She did save me one bite.

   

We headed back into town and parked there for a while so we could visit some of the shops and stores and possibly look into a hotel. There were a bunch of the usual quaint shops with an assortment of wine theme trinkets and stuff. I checked out the cost of one hotel on the main street. It really was a quaint and cute hotel. I think Chris would have enjoyed staying there, but the prices were $75 for a room with shared bath facilities and $125 for a room with its own bathroom. I didn't want to spend that much and I also didn't like the idea of sharing a bathroom, so I didn't even tell Chris about it.

Well it was starting to get late and we had no idea of where we were going to stay that night. We even entertained the idea of going back to Uncle John's but we thought that would be kind of anti-climatic so we decided to start driving south. We figured that we might end up staying in Fresno or somewhere around there. That didn't happen however. As you would have expected, we got in the mood for getting home and we ended up driving till about 2:00 AM and going all the way home. I had an abundance of energy. It was no problem. We called radio stations on the way home trying to get them to play an old song that we used to like. No one could find the record though. It was called "Got Me a Wonderful Lady" by a trio of black singers called Ray, Goodman, Brown. Nobody had it. It is a great song though. We had a great time.
 

 

The End Until Next Time!

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