Healdsburg - May 2015

View from our Rental in Healdsburg

Following our week in Huntington Beach, we flew to Oakland and drove up to Healdsburg to meet Keith's parents for Memorial Day weekend.

Accommodation:

Shawna found a really cute VRBO in the Stanley Vineyard up Dry Creek Road from the Madrona Manor and only a couple of miles outside of Healdsburg.  The owner was a former head of HR from the Gap - they were actually in the UK when we arrived though we did chat with them on the Sunday.  The cottage is just down the hill from the main house. It had 2 large bedrooms, a kitchen, a nice living room seating area, and soft seating on the deck outside.  Because the cottage was a bit up the hill, it had a fantastic view of Sonoma Valley which was glorious at the end of each day. 

Our Rental

Activities:

Keith's parents had just completed a tour of the Oregon Coast with Jim and Maryann - they had been dropped at the cottage at 4 in the afternoon while we arrived at about midnight.  It took forever to leave the airport as the car rental line was rough - but once we got out it was less than a 90 minute drive.  The front door was open so we just dropped the luggage in our room and passed out for the night. 

Keith's dad had the coffee ready in the morning so we relaxed over a cup while waiting for the cable guy to come and fix the Wi-Fi.  We decided to do the traditional tasting tour the first day, with the idea that we'd beat the crowds that would be in wine country for Memorial Day.  The stops for the day were:

• Lambert Bridge - Nice tasting room that played cool, hip music in the background. The guy who poured for us was quite personable and funny.We really enjoyed the wine here, especially the Viognier, Chardonnay, Cab Franc, Merlot, and Cab. We bought a bottle of the Viognier and drank at house that night.
• Preston - This is an organic winery and farm with lamb on property. The wine was OK but not great. The best was the Viognier. We had a picnic lunch here with bread and cheeses from the Dry Creek General Store. 
• Unti - A small winery that was recommended by a friend of ours. We liked the Rose, Segromigo, and Montelpulciano and we bought a bottle of Rose which we drank at the house the nice after. 
• Ridge - Great winery with a modern building and a great view.  We sat outside on the deck overlooking the valley while we did the tasting. We really liked the wines, especially the Chardonnay, Zin, Lytton Springs, and Monte Bello. We ordered a bottle of the Lytton Springs and drank it there.  Peter and Jen had bought us a couple of large bottles from Ridge for our wedding to drink on our 5th and 10th anniversaries, so we reciprocated and ordered then a couple of '07 bottles to be sent to them - bottled on their 10th anniversary to be opened on their 20th.  

Picnic Lunch @ Preston

Ridge Winery

We had a nap after wine tasting (which we were able to have each day - score!) and then headed out to dinner.

On the Saturday, we had signed up for a walking tour of Healdsburg through Wine Country Walking Tours.  We grabbed a light breakfast at the Oakville Grocery on the square before meeting the other four people on the tour, along with our guide Rachel.  Along the tour, we stopped at the following places:  

• Cousteau French Bakery - A bakery that has been open since 1923.  We got a brief intro and then tasted a chocolate brownie.  They also gave us some bread samplings to take home.
• Russian River Tea Company - Tasted tea and chocolate. 
• Stark - Tasted wine and sausage from The Wurst. This winery has been open for 10 years. They source grapes from other vineyards and only produce 1k cases per year. We liked the Viognier, Grenache, and Primitivo. 
• Gustafson - Tasted wine and cheese. We liked the Rose and Riesling. They have an awesome vacation rental at the winery that we must try some time. 
• Noble Folk Ice Cream and Pie Bar - Located on the square.  We tasted ice cream - we all had the salted caramel which was very yummy!
• Sanglier - Tasted wine with Mexican food from El Farolito. We liked the Pinot and Syrah. However, we liked the Mexican food even better - we tasted queso fresco, pork barbacoa, chile verde, and pork mole.

Gustafson Tasting Room

After the tour, we took another nap and then enjoyed a great dinner.

Sunday was set to be the more active day.  We dropped by the Shed for breakfast as well as bread, cheeses, and pate before driving out to Armstrong Redwoods Park.  We left the lunch in the cooler in the car and headed up the east ridge trail - 2 miles out and then a lighter trail back.  It is a beautiful area and the trees magnificent.  We dropped by Rochioli for some wine tasting (recommended by Ron the cable guy who came to fix the wifi at the house) and a picnic lunch.  We really liked every wine we tasted which was the Chardonnay, Sav Blanc, Rose, and Pinot - we bought a bottle of the Chardonnay to drink with lunch.  Unfortunately all the picnic tables were packed so we just headed back to the cottage and had our picnic lunch on the cast iron table on the deck which was fantastic.  

Armstrong Redwoods Park

Lunch at the House

We had our final nap of the weekend and then got dressed for dinner.  Jim and Maryann met us at the cottage at 6pm for pre-dinner drinks.  As we had run out of wine, Keith's dad had walked over to Everett Ridge, the neighboring vineyard, for a couple of bottles of pre-dinner wine.

Pre-Dinner Drinks with Jim and MaryAnn @ the House

On the Monday, we headed out early to beat traffic back to the city.  We stopped by Starbucks in Corte Madera for a quick breakfast before stopping by Keith's luxury property in the area - Preserve at Marin.  We saw the infinity pool and the building 6 penthouse before heading down Paradise Drive to Tiburon where we walked around town for 15 minutes.  We then headed to the airport where Keith's parents were able to get an earlier flight to Dallas, with Shawna heading to Hartford and Keith heading to Denver.

View from Preserve at Marin

Dining:

Dry Creek General Store -  Bought a baguette, cheeses, and prosciutto for picnic lunch.

Madrona Manor - We had dinner here the first night.  It's a very formal house, though we were seated on the heated and enclosed patio.  We all had the tasting menu with wine pairing. The cheese course at the end was great, as was the ice cream made table side using liquid nitrogen. 

Madrona Manor

Baci - A great Italian restaurant in Healdsburg.  We shared the the crudo, a salad, and spaghetti bolognese.  We had a great surprise at the end - the manager came out to tell us that we will have wished we ate more because the Stanley's had bought our dinner due to the Wi-Fi issues we had through the last couple of days. 

The Shed - Grabbed a light breakfast and bought all the fixins for a picnic lunch. 

Dry Creek Kitchen - A Charlie Palmer restaurant located on the main town square of Healdsburg.  The food was tasty but the service was not the best.  We shared the tuna tartare, duck breast and mashed potatoes.

Huntington Beach - May 2015

Rebecca, Keith and Shawna @ Cabos

Keith had a work meeting in Huntington Beach so we decided to head out early with Mike and Rebecca to have a beach weekend in CA.

Hyatt Huntington Beach

We left work early as we had a 3:30pm flight and we burned a handful of Southwest drink cards on the plane.  Landing at 4:30 at SNA, it was a quick drive in the rental car to the Hyatt Huntington Beach where we got the meeting discount for the whole weekend.  Our room was on the very south of the building - Mike and Rebecca had to move rooms after the first night because of the noise from the hallways.  Upon the recommendation of the concierge, we headed up Beach Street to SeaLegs Wine Bar.  The name does not do it justice - the cocktails and small plates were just fantastic.  We called it a night after dinner.

Keith and Shawna @ Mutt Lynch's

We all met at the gym on the Saturday morning and then had breakfast together at the hotel before Mike and Rebecca changed hotel rooms.  We then all rented beach cruisers and headed down to Newport.  It was a 45 minute cycle before we hit Cabos for some Corona Lites with chips/guac.  We posted the location on Facebook and immediately received suggestions on where else to drink - it appears that we are not the first of our friends to hang out in Newport!  We then started cycling back north but stopped by Mutt Lynch's for a schooner - it appears we would have been berated by our friends had we not done this.  The cycling took us along the boardwalk in front of some of the most amazing houses on the beach - many of which are $5-10k a week for rentals.  But...we added this to "the list" - we'll see if we can ever do this.  Rather than calling it a day when we got to the hotel, we kept cycling into central Huntington Beach, locked up the bikes, and had a drink at Fred's Mexican where we had beer and queso.  We then cycled back to the hotel - except for Keith whose pedal fell off so he walked the bike back.  A nap and a shower were had before we walked back up the beach to Duke's for a delicious dinner.

Keith and Rebecca @ Mutt Lynch's

Rebecca, Mike and Shawna @ 230 Forest Avenue

Sunday was another morning at the gym before we headed out to the greatest ping pong tournament of all times - Kevin vs Momma Chi.  Kevin is a colleague of Keith's and Momma Chi is the mother of another colleague.  The battle had been months of smack-talk in the works, with the question of brute force vs finesse being answered.  It was incredibly close, but finesse won the day - which also won Keith $50 off Mike!  The competitors and all 10 spectators headed over to Mark's place for an incredible Chinese lunch catered by Mark's "aunt" - it was just delicious and a super way to spend the afternoon.  After the ping pong tournament, we headed to Laguna with Mike and Rebecca to walk around a bit and also grab a drink at 230 Forest Avenue.  Dinner was at Pete's in the hotel where we had an early feast before bed.  While that was the last we saw of Rebecca - she headed back home.  However, Shawna stayed at the hotel all week working from the room as we both were flying to Oakland for a wine weekend with Keith's parents the following weekend.

Ping Pong Tournament and Lunch at Mark's

LA FUCAT - May 2015

Our fourth and final FUCAT (F'ed Up Childhood Appreciation Tour) was in Louisiana, visiting Shawna's hometown of Moreauville with John and JoAnna.  It was a trip in the making as Shawna's mom decided to do a major renovation when Shawna asked for a toilet to be fixed in the guest bathroom.  That led to tile being replaced in the bathroom along with tile and toilet being replaced in another bathroom and in the hallway, refinished floors, sheet rock on the walls with paint and new carpet up the stairs!  It turned out really nice!

Marksville High School

We flew into to Alexandria on Friday morning, meeting John and Jo in Dallas to board our connecting flight.  Their connection was really tight so they showed up to the gate with only 10 minutes to spare!  After picking up the rental car, we drove to Marksville where we saw Shawna's first high school (Marksville High), the main street where she cruised with her friends, the town square, the building where her dad used to own a furniture store and Radio Shack and the old site of the drive through daiquiri (apparently they moved).  We stopped in at the Paragon Casino to grab lunch and just couldn't pass up the $9.99 buffet.  John thought he could move here and live off of the buffet in retirement (he later changed his mind when he realized the area wasn't quite his pace)!  We tried not to eat too much but couldn't pass up the crawfish fettuccine and fried catfish.

Paragon Casino

We stopped at WalMart to pick up a few items before heading to Shawna's house in Moreauville.    After giving a tour of the house, we took a nap (we were all up pretty early to catch our flights).  That evening, Shawna's mom hosted a crawfish boil at the house which was quite yummy!  Chet brought tables and chairs and did the boil which was much appreciated.  The people who came included: Nicole, Pat, Hunter, Ginger, Michael, Katie, Linda, Diane, Michael, Jocelyn, Jean, Ashley, Judy and Eric.  We had a great time drinking beer, eating, catching up and sharing stories.  After everyone left, Chet hung around and had a few drinks with us and regaled us with stories from his time working at Angola prison.  We had planned to check out Kyrle's, which is the bar Shawna used to go to when she was young, but decided to call it a night.

Diane and Linda

Ginger and Shawna

After breakfast on Saturday, we did a walking tour of the town because a driving tour would take only 2 minutes.  We saw the site of Shawna's dad's other furniture store, Ginger's childhood house, the Moreauville School (which Shawna did not attend), the Sacred Heart Church and the Sacred Heart School (which Shawna attended from kindergarten to 8th grade).  We continued our walk across the bayou to work off some of the food from the prior day.

Sacred Heart School

After showering, we went to the Cochon de Lait Festival in Mansura, passing Kyrle's on the way - someone commented that it looked like an old strip club since there are no windows.  At the festival, we shared a few food items - cracklings, jambalaya, alligator sausage pita and the exploded fries (which made us feel like we exploded).  We had a few beers and watched the hog calling contest and the men and women's beer drinking contest.  We decided we had had enough of the 'local culture' and drove back to Shawna's house, passing through Cottonport to see the bayou.  That evening, we went to dinner with Shawna's mom, Hope and Craig at the Red River Grill.  We met them before our reservation and had a few drinks at the bar and then sat down for dinner and reminisced on old times.

Cochon de Lait Festival

Sunday was a bit of a bust.  After breakfast, we drove to St. Francisville to see the Rosedown Plantation and to have lunch.  However, while we were walking the grounds of Rosedown, we received alerts that our flights had been canceled due to weather.  So we decided to drive back to Shawna's house so that we could be closer to the airport in case we worked out some other arrangements.  We were on hold with the airline the entire way home as well as an hour after we got home (over two hours in total).  John, JoAnna and Keith were placed on the same flight the next night while Shawna was placed on an early flight the next morning with a long layover and two stops via Phoenix to get home.  While Keith and John were sorting out the flight details, Shawna whipped up a crawfish jambalaya that had a little bit of butter (OK, a lot of butter) - it was very tasty.

Rosedown Plantation

That afternoon, we drove to Alexandria and decided to stay at a Hampton Inn by the airport since Shawna's flight left early the next morning and it would allow more space for everyone to work during the day.  We stopped to watch a movie (The Avengers: Age of Ultron) and had dinner at Johnny Carino's before heading to the hotel.

On Hold with the Airline!

The next morning (Monday), Shawna woke up early to find out that her flight was canceled.  She went to the airport to sort it out and found out that she was never even placed on that flight.  They put her on a flight leaving Tuesday evening.  She decided to buy another ticket on another airline leaving Monday night through Houston but then later found out that flight was canceled as well - she finally gave up!  We all worked from the hotel on Monday and everyone left Monday evening while Shawna stayed another night and worked from the hotel on Tuesday.  The only saving grace was the free happy hour at the hotel!

While the weekend ended on a sour note, we certainly had a great time, enjoyed the food and the company and got to share life in small town Louisiana!

John and JoAnna