Sunday, December 1, 2013

Heading home… we were up early and packed up the car, cleaned up the house… It went very quickly.  After driving around Irish Beach looking at other rental possibilities (though would be hard to beat the house we had — so comfortable and perfect for us), we hit the road.  Bob stopped at the Manchester Market to find a donut and came out with Newman’s Own Chocolate Cookies…. sigh.  He ate a few of those and I had some tangerines and we called it breakfast.  

We took Mountain View Road just south of Manchester over to highway 128.  Turned out to be quite a steep and incredibly curvy road.  The grade sometimes was 16%!  It took us an hour to go 27 miles over to Boonville but it was beautiful and there were zero cars going our way and maybe five cars going the other way.  

We decided to stop at Foursight Winery tasting room to look for a bottle for the neighbors picking up our mail this weekend.  It was one of our favorites that we discovered three years ago at the Anderson Valley Pinot Festival.  We drove in to the parking at 10:02am just as the owner/winemaker was finished putting out the signage for the day…. We spent a delightful 40 minutes there tasting some really delicious Pinots — especially the unoaked.  We ended up re-joining the club and purchasing some Pinot and talking with Joe, the winemaker.  Turns out he was also the winemaker at Londer Winery, another of our favorites.  He told us that the Londers sold out, closed up and moved to Denver in the last year.  We will have to cherish our last bottles of Londer in the wine fridge.  

We have always loved Highway 128 and we were lucky today that there was virtually no traffic!  We stopped at Molsberrys Market to see if they had crab but they were sold out.  I got a cup of coffee at the Blue Beagle, Bob’s new favorite coffee shop next door (“Hi Bob!” said the guy behind the counter).  We went to G&G Market to see if they had crab (yay) and got salad stuff and fruit.  Stopped at Petaluma Market for fresh pasta and bread — I am making Patricia Unterman’s crab pasta for dinner.  

Took the back way home and arrived while 49ers were still in the first quarter.  It was a wonderful weekend except for all the sad thoughts around Dad and Anne.  We found a new favorite destination and spent relaxing, contented hours together.  Can’t ask for more than that…..