Two Thousand Mile Travelogue

WINE COUNTRY JUNKET:  The MPA student body and staff spent the last six days on a big ol' field trip, down to San Luis Obispo County, California. Our destination was Paso Robles, for a family member's wedding at a local vineyard. 

It was a bit of a drive for us, 1,000 miles down, and the same number back, of course.

We saw lots, some of which I already blogged about last week. I'll pick up where we left off - Corning, CA, - renowned for its olives. We stayed there Thursday night. 

Friday morning, we were on the road by about 7:30, I do believe. We drove in the dark for a spell, and watched the sun come up, 

Not too much later, we were driving toward Winters, California, in Yolo County. 

Off in the distance, we spied what we believed to be hot air balloons hanging in the sky. As we got closer, we knew we were right!

At first we saw two, then three, then four ... in all we saw around ten of them in various stages of flight.

This one had barely taken off. 

This one was low enough that I could see the people inside!

They were beautiful!

I sure would love to ride in one some day.

In doing a little poking around, apparently Winters is a hub of hot air balloon activity.

We continued south and eventually got to Martinez, California. It was slightly less picturesque, at least from where I-5 goes through it.  This is a Shell refinery.

However, per Wikipedia's account, the city is notable for its large number of preserved old buildings. The city is on the south side of the Carquinez Strait in the Bay Area. 

A bit further south San Ardo is a big oil field - the first we've ever seen.

Discovered in 1947, Wikipedia tells us it's the 13th-largest oil field in California. It's about five miles (8 km) long and two miles wide, encompassing about 4,390 acres.

Imagine our surprise and delight as we arrived in Paso Robles to learn that the Firestone Walker brewery had a nice pub right off the highway. We made a lunch stop there. 

We were lucky, our table was right next to posters about one of their patents related to brewing, so we got a science lesson along with an excellent lunch!

And the adjacent wall art over our table was part of the hardware featured in the patent!

From the restaurant it was less than 10 minutes to our destination, Sue Casa, a lovely, Spanish-style villa.

This photo is from the back side of the roomy residence.

 There was a beautiful pool and a lovely outdoor fireplace nearby.

 The plantings on the grounds were pretty - and exotic to us.

We saw our first pomegranate tree!

It was surrounded by palm trees and horse pastures - definitely a change of pace from living in the middle of Seattle!

The wedding was Saturday afternoon.

They even had a real live wedding bell there. :)

While walking the wedding grounds, we saw our first up-close olive trees.  Can you spot 'em among the greenery?

The wedding was at the aptly-named Carriage Vineyards. Inside the building where the reception was held, an amazing collection of carriages were housed.

The reception was lovely and lots of fun.

We made some chocolate cabernet and strawberry chardonnay cupcakes, as well as some cookies for the event.

Christian's sisters and our friend Jill decorated the cookies. Didn't they do a lovely job?!

We had to leave all-too-early Sunday morning, as we had an 11-hour day ahead of us - destination Roseburg, Oregon,  Along the way, we had some lovely vistas, including some good looks at Mt. Shasta.

  
I like this last one - you can tell we were whizzing along at about 70 mph when I took the photo.

We also got a good gawk at Black Butte (below), a cluster of overlapping dacite lava domes.

And we got a much better look at Castle Crags as we traveled back north. Super cool.

We had lovely weather for almost our entire drive home - except right when we crossed into Oregon. It started raining. How appropriate! The upside, however, is that there was a rainbow. :)

We stayed in Roseburg, Oregon, Sunday night, and were on the road by 7:07 a.m., Seattle bound. Even with quick stops in Vancouver and Centralia, we were home by 1:10 p.m., "just" 6 hours later. Really, we couldn't complain.

Two thousand miles and lots of smiles. It was a good trip.