It was incredible!!!! We had the cutest girl for our tour guide. We start out in the chapel. It was very ornate and beautiful. Then we headed into the outdoor court yard. They have lots of events here that you have to dress for the times. Next we headed into the big dining hall. It was huge and the table along the center was incredible. The castle is 8 stories four above ground and four below. They have 5 miles of piping in the walls. They crush the grapes and then pipe them to the room underground where they want to store them in the barrels. They just hook up a spigot to the faucet in the wall and start filling barrels.
They have part of a cave under the mountain that stores barrel after barrel after barrel. We headed into the torture chamber. He wanted it to be authentic so it has a torture chamber. Our guide said that at one halloween party he really had the room decked out. It wasn't all that big but kind of creepy. There was a big beautiful room with arched ceilings where there were lots of barrels stored. It was so magnificent. He sets up tables down the middle and has parties in this room too. The candle light valentine party looked like fun. They had pictures from it
There were unmarked bottles every where all stacked up. They looked really cool.
We headed down to St Helena and just walked the cute little downtown area. Some very cute stores. We stopped at a nice little mexican cafe for lunch. It was soooo good!
The rest of the afternoon we headed to Sutter Home, Turnbull, and Beringers. All of them were really nice big wineries. We didn't taste but just walked around and checked out the stores. We did stop at a neat looking winery called Alpha Omega. It was really modern and had pretty good wine.
After three days of drinking wine, we were actually wined out. So we headed out of town to the Old Faithful California Geyser. Now when we walked into this trailer looking place and the cost was $8 per person I wasn't sure I wanted to go out to see it. They had those really tall reeds to prevent you from seeing it from the trailer. Tim said come on lets go so we headed out the door. Where the stench of the fainting goats over took us. Yes they had about 12 head of the fainting goats. They are supposed to faint if startled. I tried my best to get them to faint to no avail.
Well the sign said every thirty minutes but in the last two weeks it had been going off every 5 to 8 minutes. Volcano anyone? It was pretty lame but I got some good pictures. After we go this summer to Old Faithful in Yellowstone we will have seen two of the three continuously timed geysers.As you leave the drive from here there is an advertisement for the Petrified Forrest. Another corny little out of the way place. Although the club house was better it was still $8 a piece to go on a little 1/2 mile circular hike to see these old trees that after millions of years had turned to stone. About 20 yards up the hike is a sign that says watch out for rattle snakes. Great! Again I got some nice pictures and the walk was nice.
After this adventure we headed back to the room. We decided tonight we would just snack on the crackers and cheese that we got the other day. It was very relaxing. We even went and sat in the hot tub.
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