Running Away from Home
Previously on Running
Away.
Part II
I’m sloth disadvantaged. I try.
Really I do. I’m just not good at it.
Which is why sometimes, I need to
run away from home.
It had been a hard couple of weeks.
Big project. Lots to do. 12 to 13 hour days. 7ish to 8ish. No lunch. Work.
Work. Work. Then come home. Do chores. Get no exercise. Try to advance
projects.
Crystal was becoming a very brain
dead girl. So, Karen and I decided to run away from home, again.
This time we headed North, up to
Lake country for some wine tasting.
Well, not much in the way of wine
tasting. More on that later.
So, we packed up the car, well Karen
packed, I stared blankly at space and thought big, deep, empty thoughts.
Then we headed out.
On our way up through Napa, we hit
a couple of champagne wineries. The day was beautiful, sunny, warm. The
hills were green and vineyards full of mustard flowers. I love this time
of year.
We headed up past Napa, over the
hill, drove past the first winery in Lake County and stopped at the second,
Le Ployez. The whites were okay. The reds pretty good. Karen and I were
fairly content with the amount of wine drunk that day. Three wineries isn’t
bad. However, we wanted to hit one more. It was only 3:00. So, we drove
up the hwy to where the little Lake County map depicted a wine tasting
center at the Visitor’s Center. It was closed. Hmmm….
We backtracked to a little town that
was supposed to have a winery. Drove down the main street. Nothing. Drove
back through the main street. Nothing. Drove down another street. Nothing.
Gave up and got a camp site at the
State park by the lake. Bought some wood. Went in search of food. On our,
fourth?,. pass down town, we spotted the wine tasting room (too late, bucko’s),
but no grocery store. We headed back to the town with the visitor’s center.
Huzah, a big grocery store, where we bought steak and veggies and peeps
(for roasting over the fire. After all they are marshmallows, sorta) and
lovely sin butter. It’s not actually called that. It’s an olive oil garlic
spread. It just tastes as good as sin. Thus, while less fattening, you
eat more of it, so its not really a win on the calory side.
We headed back to the campsite. Here
we made a momentus discovery. When we packed the tent up last time, we
didn’t put the tent polls in the bag. So, basically, we had a big tent
sized bag.
Not a problem. We had trees on our
site. We striped a tote bag of its string, Karen donated her shoe laces,
I climbed the tree, strung up some of the tent hooks, and soon we had a
very pathetic looking tent to sleep in.
Then I started the fire. And started
the fire. And nursed the fire. I think the wood was a little damp. Course,
it could just be that I like playing with fire. Anyway, we cooked our food.
Which was yum.
Then we roasted the peeps, which
were excellent. The outside caramelized in seconds, leaving a hot (burned
my finger, I did) gooy center. Quite satisfying.
In the morning, after lounging until
late reading Harlequin romances, we unstrung the tent and headed around
Clearlake, which was quite pretty.
On our way out, we wine tasted at
Guenoc, which was once owned by Lilly Langtry. Again, the reds were quite
good. We then headed back down the far side of Napa, stopping to picnic
at Niebaum-Coppola. We didn’t actually taste there, but the grounds were
quite nice. From their we headed off for more Champagne tasting at ? The
grounds were covered in interesting stone, metal sculptures. The champagne
wasn’t bad either.
Then we rolled on home. After all,
I had to be at work by 7ish the next morning.
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