Napa Valley

Sunday we traveled up to visit Charles' college friend Jim, who is a wine chemist in Napa Valley. Jim was the expert tour guide taking us to the best places to eat and driving us to the prettiest views in the area. He gave us mostly a driving tour of the area, stopping at the Beringer Vineyard for some wine tasting.







There Jim introduced us to the great dessert wine called Nightingale. It tastes like Creme Brulee (one of my favorite desserts), and Jim got us a bottle.

















Napa Valley is an unusually beautiful place. In one direction you'll see lush greenery, and in the other, rugged desert terrain. The grapevines are all planted in rows as in this picture. It is a well-groomed beauty. Much like the Redwoods, and now the rest of California, I fell in love with the trees.

Later in the day, we met up with Charles' other college friends Kristof and Jennifer. They have two beautiful little girls- this is their oldest Pella running around. Kristof is a wine maker, and his he named his first wine Pella Wine.
This was our ideal way to see the best of an area in one day. We didn't want to see the places that all of the tourists go, we wanted to see the places that the locals loved.
Jennifer wrote a great short story called "Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster" which was published in the 2001 Best American Mystery Stories about her short spell as a cop in Wine Country.

Redwood Wedding

Saturday, June 22nd dawned cold and clear in San Francisco. We should know, we were wide awake for it, our bodies thinking it was more like 9am. We traveled to San Fran to photograph a destination wedding in the Portola Redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The drive from the hotel was an hour of winding mountain roads with amazing views, and lots of prayers like 'God, please don't let me throw up on the bride'.
The ceremony itself was beautiful. Barry Grecu was the minister, and the alter was a wood platform surrounded by a semi-circle of Redwoods. What more could you ask for? It was humorous because periodically during the ceremony hikers would come past talking loudly until they saw the ceremony and silenced their party until they were past. One family even sat down in the back and watched the whole thing.
So this is how we ended up in California for a week. I had never been to the west coast, so when we got this wedding, I begged Charles to take a week off from work so that we could drive down the coast. We both have friends around the LA area, so it didn't take much begging.

May 2007

What happens when I get busy is that all of this great blog-worthy stuff piles up and when I do get a second to blog, it is too much to get together. So this will be a very abbreviated version of my May. I know you've missed seeing pictures of our loveable fun-bun, so here he is cuddling with his favorite metal bunny, the Bowflex.

Early in the month we held a fund raiser at Midtown for Lisa Martin who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She is now in remission. Click on "Updates on Lisa" in my Links section to read her story. Kevin Lawson & James Templeton of Red Letter Agent performed.

















Charles finally got his new mountain bike, and we've biked at least twice each week since then. I got thrown pretty badly on the expert section of Big Creek, on a not-so-expert turn. The trails have been exceptionally dusty lately and my back wheel slid out and somehow my handlebars spun around and I launched onto a dusty rocky trail. Charles' mother was visiting and taking a walk while we rode, and I felt bad arriving back to the car with blood running down from my knee to my sock. It's been a long time since I've had a bad fall, and hopefully it will be a good long time before I fall like that again.


We did a lot of riding with Bevin and Zellyn.













This past Saturday Charles and I went up to Ft. Yargo and on our drive, we passed the strangest people. I'm giving this Certified Turd Herder a free advertisement here for his shameless advertising on his own vehicle. Make sure you take a good look at this one. I zoomed in for you so that you could read his title on his rear window.
















Then we got onto the highway and spotted this motorcyclist with a little white dog with sunglasses out for a Saturday ride.










John Mark Zook was born, and DM and I went down for a visit.














We photographed a wedding for a former student, Annie.









We also photographed a wedding in Tampa for a former doctor of mine. She was married in a beautiful botanical garden in St. Petersburg, and had a reception cruise on Tampa Bay.














We had Brooke (also a former student) & her daughter over for a little modelling session.