Midweek Bonus Pics…….

I’ve been following the weather in Utah and I have to say, I am glad to be here.  We have had our share of rain, but even then, the temps are in the 60’s.  Not so much at home.  Looks like 40’s and 50’s with quite a bit of precipitation and up to a foot of snow at Snowbird yesterday (and they are still open!).  Park City is hovering in the 40’s with on again off again rain/snow.  McMinnville, Oregon, where we are headed next, looks to be in the upper 70’s early next week with plenty of sun.  Vancouver?  No need to look at the forecast.  As Grandpa emailed last week, one sunny day out of seven, on average.  Well, here’s to hoping for Vancouver sun!

We have spent the week bike riding and wine tasting but with riding, not many pictures have been taken.  We have a few, however.  So here are some Mittwoch photos for you.

Across the Alexander Valley from us, Big Sulpher Creek, which comes down from the Geysers (hence, Geyserville) which are now used for power generation only, and dumps into Russian River.  We biked up the canyon quite a ways:

To date, we have wine tasted at 28 different wineries (Yikes!)  My brother Bruce asked me, “Are you drunk all the time?”  I replied, “Not ALL the time.”  Brett and Teri took home a nice little collection from their time here:

Far left is a Wlliamson, third in is another Ferrari Carano red blend called Siena and far right is a Seghesio.

Of all of the 28 wineries visited, Liz and I have a few faves to be sure.  In no particular order, they would be Klinker Brick (Albarino) in Lodi, Rickards (All but especially Zins) in Alexander Valley, Seghesio (Zins) in Healdsburg, Ferrari Carano (All) in Dry Creek, Matanza Creek(Sav Blanc) in Sonoma, Twomey (Sav Blanc and Pinot) on West Dry Creek Road, Balo (Pinot’s) in Anderson Valley and finally our latest stop, White Oak in Alexander Valley.  Every wine they had (we tried all 12) was a stand out.  The Sav Blanc and Pinot were their best.  The winery has an art gallery and beautiful grounds.  The next few pics are from there:

Finally, we visited the Sonoma Lake Visitor’s Center and fish hatchery.  The lake is at capacity (the boat launch house has been under water) and because of the original construction of the dam, they have been restoring habitat below the dam and have created a fish hatchery for Steel Head and coho salmon.  Two years ago, 2000 steelhead spawned here.  Last year, 4000.  This year, 6500.  We watched the fish slither and jump up through the fish ladders to spawn.  Fish pics don’t turn out so well, but a blue heron dropped in to survey the scene and more than likely, snag a fish.  Incidentally, the dam for the lake is 314 feet high.  Compare that with the Oroville dam (tallest in US) at 700 plus feet high (and made the news this past late winter).  Here is the shot of the dude:

Directly in front of the heron is a black spot and what looks like a tail fin to the right, just upon the rock.  Yeah, that indeed is a fish.

Hope you enjoyed the extra photos.  More to come, as usual.  Bike riding tomorrow (or maybe a hike up around part of Sonoma Lake), lunch with the Rickards’ crew on Friday and the Twomey release party on Saturday.  More soon!