Lodi and Napa Valley California

Such a nice visit to the Corps park at New Hogan Lake and then off to Lodi, California, known as the Zinfandel Capital of the World.

As members of Harvest Hosts, we decided to make a stop at Harmony Wynelands.  http://harmonywynelands.com/

What a nice visit.  On the website is a picture of the family.  We spent a good bit of time talking with Linda and son Shaun.  A lot of interesting information about the vineyard and about wine culture in Lodi. Shaun mentioned studies in winemaking at University of California, Davis.








And then, what a pleasure to have Dad come out and play the magnificent theater organ that he installed in the Tasting Room.
The organ includes hundreds of pipes and special built enclosures.

A sound fit for a large theater.

The view out our side window at our camping spot for the night.  This camping is free, but , of course, the expectation from Harvest Hosts is that you will patronize the farm you are visiting.

No problem!

From our back window, more vines, and a great view of the almost full moon.

Lodi is not as big as Napa, a little over 62,000 population.  Partially for that reason and being newer to the winery scene, there are a number of vineyards that participate in Harvest Hosts.  There are none  in Napa.

Our next night we go across town to Jessies Grove.

This vineyard goes back to 1868(misprinted as 1968 on their website)  http://www.jessiesgrovewinery.com/

Again, a very pleasant visit with much information and great wine.  We also meet and talk with some other Rvers to exchange information. Also we show off Lady Blue to a prospective new owner of a Lazy Daze.

This vineyard is a lot bigger than Harmony and therefore a lot busier with much farm equipment.

Jan and I note that many of the managers and workers are quite young, in their 30's.

Behind the old house, is the stand of original Zinfandel vines from the 1800's.


Looks like a small tree.

The original house from the 1800's.  Not that old by New England standards.  Very pleasant with a wrap around porch.  Currently, it is being renovated.

What a great place to live.

Nice local road?

No.  Just the driveway for Jessie's Grove.

We spent some time in Lodi.  A pretty and friendly downtown area.  Jan and I purchased some wonderful cheese, olive oil, and special vinegar from one shop. We also grabbed a fired pizza from a new shop just opened by another young thirty something.
We had a small chat with her grandparents who were there.  http://www.yelp.com/biz/smack-pie-pizza-lodi

Another nice surprise was the opportunity to visit with Patrice, a friend from back home that many of you will remember.

We were happy to see Patrice and her apartment, just a short walk from downtown Lodi.

It is not nice to mention age, but Patrice, at the age of 83, is still very active with church, volunteering, and also working! as a member of the Police--uniform and all.  Impressive!

Patrice had a surprise lunch all arranged for us and even gave Jan a wonderful tulip that was happy to spruce up Lady Blue.

From Lodi, it was a short drive to Napa, California.

For most people our age, we associate Napa with the emergence of American wine as a contender and winner on the world stage.  What a difference from the vineyards in Lodi.  Along Route 29 , north of town, is a parade of beautiful wine tasting properties as well as the vineyards.  Parallel to the road travels the Napa Valley Wine Train  http://winetrain.com/?utm_campaign=Internet&utm_medium=CPC&utm_source=GoogleAdwords2013-Homepage&utm_content=Google%20Adwords%202013%20-%20Homepage&gclid=COj8uMXE6L0CFQeRfgodrU8A6g    We saw the train and were quite impressed at how full it was on a Wednesday.  Very popular.

We camped the night in Napa at the Napa Valley Expo.  What an amazing park.  It is in downtown Napa and was fairly recently renovated to look very modern and welcoming.  Only 28 sites, but it gave us a chance to walk downtown for some viewing, tasting, and a wonderful dinner at the Norman Rose Tavern.  There are a number of Zagat rated restaurants--all looking great.  Our next choice would have been Zuzu-Tapas and Paella.  http://zuzunapa.com/index.html

Our first stop the next day on route 29, was a winery recommended by a camper we met in our Napa camping spot.  We quickly noted that these elaborate wineries and tasting rooms had no need and no room for Harvest Hosts.  They were extremely busy and the traffic was huge and slow.

Beautiful grounds and crowds of people.

A plus at this winery is a very good deli that allows visitors to purchase makings for a great picnic to go with their wine.  All of which can be enjoyed in the shade at tables around the grounds.



Jan loved the roses.

Had to take this picture for Alison , although we wish the picture color was truer to the actual.

A perfect shade of lavender.

All winemaking , storage, bottling, and sales are done from this property.


I added this link to the picnic grounds, but you can see all the other offerings including weddings.

http://www.vsattui.com/Napa-Tasting-Room---Winery/Picnic-Grounds

A picture from the wine cellar and caves.

A little history in some rooms and a special room for their wine club members for tasting.

Do you like to read oak wine barrels?


All different reasons to pick different barrels. American, French, and Hungarian.  The "toast" refers to the charring of the inside.

 Dave?, Did you notice "Cooper Select Oak"?  Castello Di Amorosa is actually another winery with a very elaborate "castle" as the main feature of the grounds.   V.Sattui uses grapes and wines from other vineyards as well as their own.

A very twisty. steep, and narrow 13 miles takes us off Route 29 to Pope Valley.  A much more down to earth , old time winery with a familiar family name!

Not only does it have a history back to the 1800's, but a little more connection to the history of winemaking and the survival of some of these wineries during Prohibition.

Pope Valley Winery sailed right through Prohibition by shipping wines to Chicago---to someone called Al Capone.  The wine was served in Al's speakeasies and brothels.  However, when Capone started "offing" people, the winery decided to stop the shipping.

In contrast,V. Sattui closed his winery which did not reopen again until the grandson reopened in the 1970's.

Ed Haus was the founder in 1897.  In a showcase of 19th century technology, he built this three story barn into the hillside.  The grapes could be started at the top of the hill and then wound up in the bottom floor in barrels.  The room was naturally temperature controlled by the hillside.  On site was a creek to help run the blacksmithing shop--tools are still there.

The small shed in front that looks like it might be a barbeque, is really the old time hot water heater.

Another young winemake, this is Charlie. He says he was born in the 90's.  Like we said, young workers.

He was explaining to Jan how Ed Haus had hand cut through the shale behind Jan to create this three story building.  The current and future wines are aging in the barrels  Charlie was great, walked us around the property and gave us a golf cart ride through the vineyards.

This is a view from the Tasting Room and the Barn.

A beautiful property surrounded by miles of other beautiful property.

We enjoyed Charlie--currently a local college student majoring in "winemaking"---because he absolutely loved his job.

An interesting addendum to our visit. While in the Tasting Room, a gentlemen came in to pick up a few cases of wine.  He started talking in a very heavy Italian accent.  Very pleasant and pointed out some papers to us.  Well, Charlie explained to us that he was the owner of a local Italian Restaurant.  The menu looked wonderful.  It was like a scene from old wine areas of France. Local produce, local wines, and local restaurants. Everyone connected to each other. We are given the opinion that Californians are proud of their local foods.

Such a nice visit along the wine trail.  Right now, we are relaxing in Clear Lake State Park.  Just sitting and watching the fishermen, birds, and scenery!

Yosemite National Park

Jan and I had a wonderful visit at Park Sierra in Coursegold, California.  It is one of our membership parks of Escapees and it is one of our new favorites along with Jojoba Hills in Aguanga.

We had originally planned to visit Yosemite from Park Sierra, since it is only about 20 miles from the southern entrance to the park.  However, after talking to some of the members at Park Sierra, we decided to try to find a campsite in Yosemite.

If you haven't tried this, it is not a given.  The park will tell you that all the sites have been reserved , and if you go online to the Recreation.gov site you will also see that there is no availability.

But-------there had been a 15 inch snowfall in the park and we were ready to gamble.  After a phone call of pressing many options on a convoluted menu, I was able to talk to a live ranger at the park. He indicated that as many as 100 campers had cancelled due to the snow(chains were required during and after the storm).

So, we waited a day( for the snow to melt a bit) and headed up. 

Route 49 from Park Sierra to Route 140 was the recommended no snow route.  A pretty road that followed the Merced River to the Yosemite Valley.

The picture above gives a hint of the wonderful spring flowers on the hillsides.  Many of these were yellow and orange poppies.

Eustis is worried about the one lane bridge.

No worries Eustis!!!!

Not too long before we see that welcoming sign to

Yosemite National Park. 

It is also a sign that you are starting to climb to the 4400 foot elevation of the valley.

Yes, that boulder is hanging over the road!!

But, we have to understand that it has been there for years.  It will not fall------will it?

And yes, the clearance is fine for most RVs.

After the entrance booth we must go through this little tunnel.  Oh, that is why it is called Arch Rock Entrance.


Somewhat narrow, but plenty of clearance for Lady Blue.   Eustis is closing his eyes.

But, once we are in the valley, the views are "wow!!" around every corner. Half Dome on the left.

Yosemite is not completely open until the end of May, beginning of June.  That is mostly for the higher roads going north and east of Yosemite Valley.  Yosemite Valley is pretty much open all year with restrictions around snow storms. 

The three campgrounds in this area are Upper Pines, Lower Pines, and North Pines.  We would have been happy with a site in any of the three.  As you can see, the views are eye opening.

We headed for the reservation office and were waited on immediately by a friendly ranger.  We did have a number of possibilities for open sites.  THANK YOU!!!  We would have to move, but we had 2 days on one site and then 2 days on a different site.  Since we are compact, that was not a problem at all.  In fact, we enjoyed ourselves so much we then added 2 more days for a total of 6 nights. Remember, the online reservation site and the phone system would have told us--No Vacancy.

At the entrance to our campground, on one of the bridges in the park, the two guilty parties posed for a snapshot.

One of the most popular attractions in the park is Yosemite Falls.  At 2,425 feet from the top to the base of the lower falls, it is the highest waterfall in North America and the sixth highest in the world.  We are sorry, but none of our pictures can do it justice.

What a joy to have six days to explore the park.  We took the free shuttle all around, we walked trails and roads, and we bicycled all around. 

One of the things that kept coming back to us was wondering what the first visitors thought when they saw this valley. 


This is the Lower Falls.

Depending on your viewpoint in the park, you might see the upper falls, or just the lower falls, or all of the upper and lower falls.

We were lucky that there had been rain and snow to offer such a vivid and energetic falls.  The falls do dry up in the late summer with the spring snow melt offering the best views.

If you had a lot of time, you could try to speculate how many photographs are taken each day or each year.
Thanks very much for digital cameras.  We would have used a large number of old style roll films.

Since there are so many large trees in the campgrounds, our solar panels were kept to minimal charging. 

But, as you can see, we ventured out in the park to a sunny spot and took out our chairs. You can see Jan enjoying the view of the falls and a little Kindle reading while we let Lady Blue recharge---doesn't take long.

We didn't think of this as a negative.  Do you agree?

Jan and I love catching the movies at the Visitor Centers in the parks.  Yosemite was one of the best.

The Spirit of Yosemite was a great wide screen introduction to the park.

Even better, we enjoyed a new movie by Ken Burns of PBS fame.  Had we time, we would have watched it at least once more.  The movie was brand new and filmed for the 150th anniversary of Yosemite.


From the movies and the park, we have a much greater admiration for the men and women responsible for creating our national parks.  One name at the top of the list for Yosemite was John Muir.  And with John Muir was the president he invited to camp with him in the valley, Theodore Roosevelt.  Roosevelt loved his visit so much that he became the president most know for preserving the natural beauty of the United States.
Also significant was knowing that President Abraham Lincoln signed and Congress had approved the creation of Yosemite during the worst days of the Civil War---and none of them had ever seen it!!

There is more than Yosemite Falls.

From the Valley Loop we had good views of El Capitan.

Did not see any rock climbers, but a very intimidating climb!

There are so many mountains in view on the loop.


The Three Brothers.

Also from the Loop Road is Bridalveil Falls.


No matter what time of year, Bridalveil is always there.

It's not all camping.  The Ahwahnee Hotel was built many years ago to attract the affluent Americans and international visitors.  Kings and queens, movie stars, and other famous people have stayed in luxury at the Ahwahnee.

On our bike rides, there were a number of spots favored by the resident mule deer population.

Again out on the Valley Loop road. there are many stops and rest areas to take pictures.  It is not difficult to understand how much the early visitors loved this area.  One of the buildings we enjoyed was the Ansel Adams Gallery.  Many of us grew up with the black and white photographs taken by this outstanding outdoor photographer.  This was perhaps his favorite subject.

Jan and I loved this so much that we hiked and biked twice--once to each side.  And this is called------------Mirror Lake.  Can you see why that might be??  What a great spot.

But---it became time to move on.  We would have stayed longer.  Perhaps our favorite national park.  On to another Corps of Engineer park on New Hogan Lake.  We loved this park as well for hiking and views of the surrounding valley and mountains. The lake is 4,400 acres---huge.  Even with the drought, there is a large area of water.  As you can see there about 30 trucks and trailers here for some weekend fishing.  Also a good bicycling and hiking area.  Our only frustration in the past weeks has been a lack of Verizon signal.
We saw that we had 3 phone messages, but since we were on "extended network", we could not access the messages or tell who sent them.  Right now, though, we have 4g---go figure.

 

Can you see Lady Blue??

 

Giant Sequoias Continued

This is the view from our back window the day of the snowstorm.  That is one thing we miss about snow--how nice it looks right after or during the snowstorm.  After that--not so much.

This is some of the ---"not so much."

If you were wondering--we do not carry a shovel with us.  But, the campground had these shovels for campers to clear out their fireplace coals and carry them in a fire bucket to a special dumpster.  I wasn't the only one using the shovel for snow clearing.

 The whole day of snow, the temperature stayed around 30 degrees. Night temperatures were down in the 20's.  Lady Blue--nice and warm.

A kind of obvious note---solar panels produce zero electricity when covered by 9 inches of snow. So, after shoveling, it is necessary to climb ---carefully--on the roof to clear off the panels.  During the storm, the 4,000 watt generator kept us all charged up.

Once the storm ended, Jan and I could go walking.  The roads were mostly dry and not slippery.

The young sequoias grow tall and narrow.  They look great with the new snow cover.

It's about a half hour or so walk to Grant Grove to see the General Grant tree.

The older sequoias turn a great cinnamon color.

A perfect contrast to the green needles and the white snow.

We were not expecting so many giants so close to our campground.

Had to show the cars for a better appreciation of the tree size.













Jan seems a little on the small side next to the sequoia.


But  , no, it's not a case of "Kids, I shrunk your Mom."

General Grant is standing way behind the smaller trees.

The General Grant tree is the second largest living thing in the world.

This is a cabin built in 1872 by Israel Gamlin.  Israel and his brother were logging the large trees on 160 acres before the park was formed. 


It is amazing that most of the cabin is original although not all from sequoia wood. 


The cabin was used by the U.S. Cavalry while they were here patrolling the park--until 1913.
It was also used as the first park ranger quarters.

Right now, we are in another great Escapee park--The Park of the Sierras, in Coarsegold, California.  That is on Route 41 about 20 miles southwest of the Yosemite National Park entrance.  We arrived here this past Friday.  But we had to keep an eye on the weather.  There were three snowstorms on the roads up to and into Yosemite, including 15 inches of snow last night.  Roads are supposed to be good tomorrow and we learned that there are a number of cancellations at the campgrounds---so into Yosemite Valley tomorrow.