levin weekend

Kim and Brent were WWOOFing at a vineyard up by Russian River Valley last weekend and they had some free time, so we went up and spent most of the weekend with them. We thought we could run around for part of one day, and then Brian and Sam could help out at the vineyard for part of another. It was AWESOME!

We went up on Saturday and got a really great room at the Geyserville Inn. I had to get a suite, because we all know how well it worked when we tried to put Charli to sleep in the same room that we were staying up in... The inn had 4 suites, all of which are housed in a separate building than the one the single rooms are in. Since it's off season, though, no one was staying in any of the other suites, so we had the whole building to ourselves - not that we could go into the other rooms or anything, but no one was running around on our lawn, and we had the whole parking lot to ourselves. So, there's our building, and you can see Sam and Brian hanging out on our patio (we had the bottom left corner room), and there were all these nice bushes and flowers and hummingbirds and lizards and bees... We just left all the doors open and let Charli run wherever she wanted to, so she was probably having the best time of her life. And that lawn I mentioned - not too shabby, is it? It had wisteria, picnic tables, lots of room to run around, and did I mention it was all ours? The place was really perfect for our family.

We hung out at the inn for a little while, and then we decided to hit some wineries. We started out at Stryker Sonoma, which had the most tremendous wisteria arbor I've ever seen, and is owned or part owned by a family that Sam is friends with, which is why we went in the first place. They had a grassy outdoor area that Charli ran around on, and unfortunately they also had large glass walls that Charli walked right into (only once - although we did notice her afterwards a few times walking very slowly up to them and feeling them curiously). We didn't actually see her walk into the glass, we just heard a loud BONG and turned to see her looking very dazed a few feet away from it... The we went to Ridge, where they had someone giving samples of really good chocolate as well as wine tasting, and we realized that we had been very foolish to come out to the vineyards without bringing any picnic makings. So, after Ridge, we stopped at a grocery store and got cheese and apples and bread and salami and chocolate, and then we went to a winery called Sbragia, which the folks at Ridge had told us had a nice patio. They did indeed have a nice patio, but it was all on top of the building, so all concrete and no grass. Charli ran around anyway, and we all had our picnic with some Sbragia wine, and when everything closed up at 5:30 we headed back to the inn and ran around our yard some more. Charli had some picnic leftovers for dinner, and after she went to bed, Brian and Brent went out and got us a PILE of pizza, and we had more wine and pizza for dinner.

Kim and Brent ended up staying late and sleeping on the floor, which enabled us to go out and have a big breakfast the next morning, rather than being efficient and getting to LeVin at any sort of reasonable hour. We ended up checking out around noon and not getting to the winery until about 12:30, which was just in time to look around a little and then have about a 3 hour wine tasting (and olive oil and cheese and cracker and bread tasting). The winery is in a really gorgeous location (although I guess everywhere out there is pretty beautiful), and the wine was quite tasty. We ended up buying several bottles from hosts Eric and Holly, and having a really terrific time. We headed home around 4, having not only done no work, but also kept Kim and Brent from doing any work, and helping keep Eric and Holly from getting anything done either (we can't claim sole responsibility for that, as there were 2 other WWOOFers and one of their mothers tasting with us). Sam and I passed out immediately on the way home - extended wine tasting is really exhausting, apparently.

You can see a lot more pictures of our weekend here.