25th Anniversary Pictures

25th Anniversary Pictures, May 16th through May 22, 2008

Some posting that I did to Open Mind during our vacation

Sat May 17, 2008 11:57 am

Well, we made it to Moss Landing!

Quite the trip through the central valley. VERY hot. 104 in some places.

We saw the James Dean Memorial and we stopped at Grey Wolf (our fav winery) in Paso Robles. I could not tell you guys about the surprise I had planned because the wife reads this (Hi wife!) but I brought two silver plated and engraved wine flutes to celebrate our 25th..and I broke it out after we got up here and opened up a bottle of our fav wine! She loved it!

Captain's Inn in Moss Landing is a GREAT place. Nice rooms, owner/operated B&B (That is REAL important to us). Lots of glass to look out over a tidal waterway and a very comfortable room. Tad of a downside...they advertise "high speed Internet" and this is anything but. But that is ok...we are on vacation and will have to deal with snail speed.

Our room is interesting..the bed frame is a boat trailer....with WORKING tail lights! And there is a canopy that is ..well....a boat!

We just got back from the artichoke festival too. Quite interesting and I would certainly recommend going to if you have never been. Larry would have loved the classic car show. I took a few pics but I will wait until I get back because I need my mouse and home computer to really do a decent post. (As you can tell, the pic I posted is a tad large but chalk that up to my laziness to only do a single convert to a smaller pic.) Lot of interesting booths with arts and crafts. We got a neato "desktop" fountain.

Food wise..well..it's artichoke! We started with grilled artichoke, went to an artichoke soup and finally, a carne asada taco with artichoke. Tasty..but we got full, fast!

We were going to also take in the Salinas Valley Fair but we see that it is an hour backwards from where we are..so we will just hang out and see what is around here. Gold Country on Monday!

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Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 5:47 am

Yesterday was a nice day for us...lots of driving though.

We started up in Murphys at the Ironstone winery. We had intended to stay there in Murphys for a bit but we heard more about Columbia state park and decided to go up that way instead.

Interesting place but...LOTS of kids. The shopowners called it "May Madness". I guess this is THE field trip place to go!

We got tired after that trek and decided that today, our actual anniversary day, we would go back to Murphys and check out the town.

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Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:44 am

thomascanty wrote:
You're in Murphys? Hey! Head east on the 4 a little further to Arnold. Beautiful country up there! I think Calaveras Big Trees State Park is even more beautiful and impressive than Yosemite.

Heh...that is EXACTLY what we did! We went to Murphy's at around 11 and even though many of the shops said that they open at 11, most were closed and some were even closed for the day. We found out later from our host that most of Murphy's is owned by a very few millionaires that "staff" the stores and sometimes they will close one for a day but you will see the workers at another store. Odd.

Also, we DID like the Ironstone winery in Murphy's but disliked the others that we tried. I would say that, at least for us, this is not "wine country" as we know it. But that's ok..there is plenty of other things to do so when we decided we were hungry, we were going go up to Arnold to the Snowshoe Brewery.

A nice drive up to Arnold and we really like the place! Might even be where will stay the next time. (Hey Lon, did you mention where you stay when you come up here? Now that we have been here, we have a perspective)

While in Arnold, the bartender at the Brewery (great burgers there BTW) also mentioned Big Trees and said it is only 4 miles further so...up we went!

You are right that it is VERY impressive! We went into a couple of the campgrounds and such and liked what we saw and SMELLED! (The air with the tree scent was....well...wonderful!) We ran out of time and had to leave but what a nice place! Unfortunately for us techies, there was no cell phone coverage and certainly no Wi-Fi. We are thinking that if we get up into that area again, we will either get a cabin or find a place in Arnold that has the communications that we need.

As how it was our 25th yesterday, we opted OUT of going to a restaurant. (We have been eating out every night as you do when you travel and we were tried of it all) So, the place where we are staying at has a real nice outdoor kitchen/BBQ thing and we just stopped at the local market and found some marinated chicken breasts in the butcher area, some peaches for the BBQ and a baguette. We broke out the glasses that I brought and the wine we brought from Gray Wolf and had a GREAT anniversary dinner!

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