California Dreamin'

We had an absolute blast in Cali! We went there to attend the wedding of Gabe's college friend and decided to make an anniversary trip out of it and stay a few extra days in San Francisco. I had spent a very brief time in San Fran several years ago and have always wanted to go back. Our hotel location couldn't have been more perfect since it was about an hour drive to the wedding down south, and only an hour to Napa up north. Plus we were able to spend some time at the Fisherman's Wharf and tour the ellusive Alcatraz.
With that, I will turn it over to the pictoral narrative...


Day One: Wedding location just north of Santa Clara...a really cool, unique place to have a wedding.



All dressed up and ready to go!


A steam train takes us up to the ceremony location deep in the redwood forest.


Gabe's Vanderbilt buddies. From the left: Alison, Greg, Kara and son Joshua. Great people. We had a great time with them.


The 45 minute ride up was spectacular! I couldn't stop taking photos even though the photos don't do the trees any justice. They are huge and beautiful!
The ceremony took place in a small wooded grove.


Mr. and Mrs. Tran: Julie and Duc. Since Duc is vietnamese, they wore traditional wedding clothes and had gorgeous music.


The ride back was just as spectacular as the ride up.
Once back at the reception area, we found out that Julie had fallen ill and wasn't able to make the reception so we were sad not to be able to send her off with good wishes. Nevertheless, we had a great time at the reception, left early and drove the Pacific Coast Highway back up San Fran.




Day 2: NAPA! YEA! I didn't realize wine country could be so darn fun! We drove up Sunday afternoon and stopped at three wineries. We learned that depending on where you are in wine country depicts what types of wine you can find. Since we were in Napa Valley where the climate is hot and dry, the wineries there mostly make reds. Had we known this, we would have ventured to Sonoma where there are more white wines. However, we still had a complete blast. We had to take a break and stop at Dean and Deluca for some bread and cheese since we got just a tad too toasted! :)



Have to cross a bridge to get to Napa. This is the Bay Bridge. I was just a tad nervous on this one. I would hate to be here during an earthquake!

Nice view of Napa from the Rutherford Hill Winery

Last stop was the best! Mumm Napa. I am a sucker for sparkling wine and this was an awesome winery that specializes in sparkling wine. YUM! MUMM!

Great tasting room. It is a lot like a small bistro. After three glasses of bubbly I am H-A-P-P-Y! I loved it so much that I joined their wine club. We get a shipment of sparkling wine every two months. I just got my first shipment yesterday and am trying really hard not to drink it all at once!View of the Mumm vineyard.

These grapes were not quite ripe enough or I wouldn't be able to resist trying one! Not a bad pic for a tipsy Alli.
Day 3: Alcatraz!

Ever since my first visit to San Fran, I have always wanted to see Alcatraz. The recommendation is to take the night tour because its really creepy and cool, but they are very popular and is sold out well ahead of time, so we had to settle for the afternoon tour. Gabe and I stopped at Fisherman's Wharf for a fantastic lunch of clam chowder in a freshly baked sourdough bread bowl. yummmm! Then got on the ferry to The Rock.
Seeing this view for the first time takes your breath away. Its very surreal and creepy. The tour includes a self guided audio tour that is narrated by an old warden and a few of the former inmates. You really feel like you are there with them. The whole tour was great. We were not disappointed.

We couldn't leave with out the "Al Capone photo opp". But, there were so many people trying the same thing, the best we could do was this angle. With the wide open cell door, it loses the effect a bit, don't you think??? haha.

After returning to the wharf , we met up with Gabe's Vandy friends and had dinner at a funky garlic restaurant called The Stinking Rose in the heart of San Fran. The food left something to be desired, but the atmosphere was very "San Francisco".

The entire trip was great and created loads of great memories. We always have a lot of fun together. What was even better was knowing that when we got back on Tuesday we still had the whole week left! Wednesday we recuperated from the jet lag and spent time with Gabe's parents. Thursday, we went to Lake of the Ozarks to meet up with our friends Greg and Shawna. I was finally able to meet their son, Gavin, who is arguably the cutest baby on the planet! Here's to you Kunz family!

Once home from the lake, we spent the rest of the week with my brother, Philip, and his girlfriend Gretchen. It is always great to see them and spend some quality time. Unlike the last two times they came out, the weather finally cooperated and we were able to spend at lot of time outside, playing golf, frisbee, horseshoes, and enjoying the property and scenery. Of course, we also made time to get in some good video gaming with Chris and Barbie. It was quite hard to go back to work Monday, but I guess that why they say Life's a Beach! :)

Slacking

I am embarrassed that it has been so long since I have posted anything new. But never fear! I am back and ready to blog again! We have been on vacation...and though its a poor excuse for not blogging, it is my excuse nonetheless.
Gabe and I have been very busy since the Boston trip. Gabe's parents came up to house/pet sit for us while we went to San Francisco for a long weekend to celebrate our anniversary (3 years!) and go to a friend's wedding. We took the rest of the week off to enjoy friends and family. We were able to spend a little time with Gabe's parents before they left, saw an awesome movie-Kung Fu Panda-twice (yes, its that good!), spent one day at the Lake of the Ozarks with our great friends Greg and Shawna while they were here on vacation, and enjoyed a visit this last weekend from my brother and his girlfriend, Gretchen.
I have lots of great pics from California and our week of bliss. So many, in fact, that I may have to break them up into seperate blogs.
So stay tuned! I plan to have something up by the end of the week.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Back from Beantown

Boston is a GREAT town! I was there for a 6 day work trip for the American Society of Microbiologists tradeshow. It was a long and exhausting week. We flew in Saturday. All day trip with a long layover in Charlotte (yuk) with the same story back on Thursday. We were on the go non-stop between setting up the booth, working the booth, group dinners, more booth duty and tear-down. But, I was able to get an afternoon and take a quick bus tour of the city. As whirlwind as it was, I was able to capture a few cool pics of some key places. Thank goodness I have an awesome camera that can capture a decent photo moving at 20mph!


First, a pic of our booth.....pretty snazzy...


A view of Boston Harbour from dinner on Monday night

Not sure what church this is, but it's old and gorgeous. One of a few historical churches in the area.

The old State House. The first reading of the Declaration of Independence to Bostonians happened here from the balcony.
Cheers! (or at least the exterior shot from the show) The inside isn't really the Cheers bar.
And you can't leave Boston without seeing Fenway. Gotta bring Gabe back for a game here.
I couldn't resist taking this pic of the famed Boston Fire Dept.
What a great town. Reminded me a lot of Europe. We did a couple of other cool things like eating dinner at the oldest restaurant in the US - Ye old Union Oyster House (est. 1826), experiencing The North End and Little Italy (by far the best cannoli I have ever had) and partaking in some local fare such as baked scrod (scrawd) and clam chowder (chowda). But as great of a time as we had, I was very happy to get back home. Six days on a business trip isn't my cup of tea, and Gabe liked it even less. I hope to get back to Boston in the near future with Gabe. The history buff in me just didn't get enough and I know Gabe would love to see a game at Fenway (if we can get tickets before 2015)



On a whole other note.... we performed another animal rescue today. Maybe we need to start a show on Animal Planet! Animal Rescue Midwest Style....

A co-worker of mine discovered a very large snapping turtle stuck in his window well. He wasn't sure what to do with it, so I helped him out by taking it off his hands. I figured it might like our pond. Of course, that was before we found out it was a snapping turtle! But, we took him anyway. I don't expect him to stick around long. Turtles tend to wander a lot. And hopefully the animals are smart enough to stay out of his way!

It was a fun ride home with him. About half way home, he started to get pretty restless and starting trying to climb out of the bin. EEEEK!! Its hard to drive when you have a snapping turtle trying to run around in your car! So I had to pull over and put him in the trunk. HA! What a life! :) Anyway, got a nice pic of him and a video is his release back into the wild.

He measured about a foot in length and about 6-8 inches across. Not nearly as cute as a regular turtle He had a lot of spikes.

And freedom!...