Sunday, September 7,2008

Seattle was a nice city. We took a tour around the city. It's a pretty spread out city but has a beautiful cityscape from afar. Our guide told us it was expensive to live there, guess taxes are high there. What was pretty cool is when something new is built a certain percentage of that has be an art piece. The troll however was built to keep homeless from living under that bridge. It seems like there were always bottles and cans left there so the troll was put there and it did solve the problem. While on this tour we went through this very wonderful market place. It gives Italy a challenge. The vegetables and fruit were flawless and the flowers we spectacular. It was huge as well. Also a fish area, a meat area, cheese, jams and jellies, nuts , pastas, it was pretty amazing. The next day we went to Boeing. This is an area just outside of the city. It was in the red building where the company began. And now it is all museum including to larger building. It was quite interesting. Across from the museum were two planes you could go through. One was a Concorde and one was Air Force one. The Concord was very narrow and quite small inside. It could cross the Atlantic if 2 hours and 49 minutes. Very expensive to run however and it never made any money. Air Force One was interesting as well. The presidents that used this airplane were, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, and Kennedy. I guess President Eisenhower designed the interior and it was a rather no frills sort of interior. It was nice but not fancy at all.

Ok now from there we went to Crescent City, CA to see the Giant Redwoods. There is a state park near where we stayed and it is filled with red woods. And they are red as you can see from the fallen one on the ground. They are very tall up to 370 ft.. The bark is very striated, almost like ropes going up the tree. Some are quite wide as you can see from the picture of Mike. Well we found a state park ranger and he told us that the Sequoia is a bigger tree!!!!! At least the trunk is, not as tall only about 300 feet but much bigger around. So we are going to go see those on our way out of California. Our drive from Crescent City to Petaluma was quite beautiful as it was along the pacific most of the way. Also from Crescent City and closer to Petaluma the temperature changed enormously. WHEW hot hot hot.

Got Petaluma and are in a KOA campground. Huge campground with 300 sites. They got a pools showers, everything and also have these cute little lambs and sheep as you drive in to the office. It ends all there. It STINKS, it smells like we are inside of the barn. It REEKS, we can't open the windows. Looking forward to leaving. Anyway yesterday we went into San Fran. They have a tour you can take from here but it was $69.00 per person for 6 hours. So no no no we drove in. Found a place (near the waterfront) to park the truck for $5.00 for the day. Walked a couple of blocks down the from the truck and bumped into this great market place with all the great stores in it. One I have never seen before, it was a Caviar place to eat!!!!!! All they served is wine and all different kinds of caviar. It was a great place I could shop there more. From there we went to Fisherman's Wharf and had a late lunch. Walked a little to where the old trolley cars are. A long line to ride it at $5.00 a ride and you couldn't do it round trip. I rode on it many times 40 years ago when it was probably a quarter to ride and you could jump on whenever. That took much of our day, and we were back to the barn about 8:00 pm.

Today we went in the opposite direction to Napa Valley. We were hoping to do Sonoma as well but did not have the time. Most of the winery's do not open until 11:00 and close about 5:00. This poop-aroma haven we're in is about an hour from Napa. We had great fun however, we went in Domaine Carneros which is connect to Tattinger in France. Beautiful tasting mansion and grounds. Mostly champagnes of coarse. Did not taste. Then we went to BV, but they did not have their zin so we did not taste there. Then to Merryvalle, we did taste there. A flight of white and a flight of red. They were ok, they did not have any starmont. But they did have some Zin that we bought. We did not get to taste the Zin and hope it is good, but they only make 200 cases of it and we would not be able to get it anywhere. Then lunch, nothing special but thought we should eat before going on. We went to Grgich and I tried there Zin. Gag gag gag. It tasted like a tart cab!!! Guy said our Zins are the syrupy Zins you get in Europe!!! What? EH? It had no fruit or berry flavor at all. Ah well
The we went to a winery called Peju, a fairly new winery. Very beautiful place. Most of their wines are shipped in the state. They produce about 40,000 cases a year. Found the wine pretty good. I'm not big on cabs and merlots which is mostly what we tasted. I tasted there Zin and like that. The last place we went to was Supery. In this place we saw their big vats and the area they make the wine and bottle it. It was fascinating. Did not taste there, we were done.

So tomorrow we are on our way to Yosemite where the Sequoia are located. We are forfeiting Lake Tahoe.