Time for a Napa

Next Stop: Napa Valley, California. 

We drove into Napa at sunset and checked into the Wine Valley Lodge. That coke machine back there sold us Santa Clause coca-cola. Apparently people are too busy drinking wine at the Wine Valley Lodge to buy soda from the vending machine very often. 

Every meal we had in Napa was delicious! We had this amazing meal at an Italian restaurant in Napa our first night there.  Sometimes we still think about it... mmmmm. 

Day II: Wine Tasting day!!  The front desk person at the Wine Valley Lodge tried to insist that we take the Wine Bus from site to site. It cost $90/person and that price didn't include the tasting fees. When Dan said that we weren't really interested the woman barked: "Better than a DUI!" Yikes!

So since we were on our own, we walked into the first winery we saw, which was this one called "Luna." After awkwardly standing around trying to figure out what was happening, we left Luna sans wine and contented ourselves with just taking pictures of the grounds and vineyards (next 2 pics). 

The next few pictures are of Clos du Val, which was our first successful walk-in wine tasting. 

Grapes!!! 

More of Clos du Val 

Moving on to some more vineyards...  We only did wine tastings at a few vineyards but we tried to visit vineyards in different scenic areas so that we could walk around and take pictures.  Many of the vineyards were off of two main highways, and we drove up and down them looking at the scenery. 

Sad Grapes. 

This picture is from a walk we took after dinner. The sign promised that it was a wildlife viewing area. Sadly there were no critters in sight. But there was a beautiful sunset view, so it worked out just fine. 

Driving again! 

Critter!!