It’s been a fun couple of weeks especially as the weather is finally cooling down a bit.
Last weekend I got out for a hike around Phoenix Lake, a place I havent been to for quite a while. It was early on Saturday morning so I didn’t see many other folks until I got to the end of my hike. It’s such a beautiful place especially now with the fall leaves starting to change.
The house that is just outside the entrance to the lake had dozens of Halloween sculptures all the way down the front of the property. It was impressive, especially as many of them moved and made noise. They definitely go all out for that holiday. I’ll have to go back before Christmas and see what it looks like then.
On Sunday, Julie and I met up in Calistoga then made our way to the Bale Grist Mill a few miles outside of town. We had fun at their Pioneer days, making cornhusk dolls, using an old-fashioned apple press, learning how the Grist mill worked back in the 1800s, watched people card and spin wool and listened to some great music.
After that, we hiked over to Bothe-Napa State Park, then continued on the Ridge Trail into Calistoga going through vineyards and enjoying beautiful views of the nearby mountains. After having lunch in town, we went for a little wander and found a place that had an outdoor theater so decided to come back for the show that night. We got ourselves checked into our cabin, a wonderful place set amongst the trees that included a kitchen and bathroom with a shower (always a treat when you have several hikes planned). It was a perfect spot for our explorations on the Ridge Trail in that area. Just before sunset, we headed back to Calistoga (this time, traveling by car) and watched Spy Game starring Robert Redford and a very young Brad Pitt. It wasn’t the best movie in the world, but it was fun to watch a movie under the stars, and we saw a long lasting shooting star!
On Monday we continued our quest to do more of the Ridge Trail, hiking the section in Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. It was a pretty decent amount of up, but beautiful and quiet, we only saw a couple of other people the whole time we were on the trail. Such a beautiful peaceful place. I also achieved the 10,000 mile marker on my Pedometer app! We got back and both enjoyed our showers, which reinvigorated us enough to head out on another adventure….
This time we did a proper wine country excursion going to Coppola Winery. First, we did a guided tour getting to see their skywalk with views of the beautiful pool and surrounding area, then the bottling line and finally the museum with memorabilia from many of Francis Ford Coppola’s movies. We did some wine tasting, one of the more reasonably placed prices for wine tasting (the average seem to be $75-$85 at other places – gulp!). Of the four white wines we tried I really liked three of them, which was an excellent hit rate. We made our way back to the cabin for a relaxed evening after a fantastic day.
Tuesday’s hiking took us to Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, a new place for both of us. We didn’t get too far on the trail as we had a later start, but discovered an area with labyrinths made from volcanic rock – they were amazing, very intricate. There were also incredible views from the top of the ridges. It was hard coming back to civilization with lots of cars and not as much beautiful scenery.
Later on Tuesday I went for a walk with Mom, Chrissy and Javi to our old elementary school, where we ran into Tia, the woman who has been running the afterschool care for 45 years! She and Mom got a chance to catch up, marveling at how quickly the time has gone. Later, we looked through some pictures that my aunt had sent mom, many of my Dad when he was younger. We marbled over the photos, most of which we had never seen before. Dad looked so much like my youngest sister it’s incredible, no wonder she was his favorite. 🙂
On Wednesday morning, we were treated to a little rain and which produced an absolutely gorgeous rainbow just outside the front door. I had walked about a block when a young boy rode by on his bike and excitedly said ‘Did you see the double rainbow?!’
I had a busy rest of the week at work with many meetings in the evenings and a meet and greet with one of the organizations major funders. It was a lot of fun to talk to the foundation board members, they were one of the foundations that took a chance on the organization 10 years ago and their funding helped the organization to be able to expand and attract other funders. It is wonderful to see their dedication to supporting areas of the community that are often forgotten because they are away from major urban centers.
The end of the week also brought my judicial nominees evaluation commission meeting, which as always, was full of interesting and robust discussion. Part of the tradition is to go out as a group on the Friday night for dinner and this time we did something different and actually made our own dinner! It was a lot of fun to work with everybody in a new way and we made some really good Thai food too.
