Day Two

Alrighty, Day Two and we were R-E-A-D-Y to go.  I neglected to tell my Mom about this little adventure until AFTER we got home.  Not sure she would have approved of these little plans.  We decided to hire a driver for the day.  I'm not talking getting a Limo or Party Bus, I'm talking about going to winecountrydrivers.com and hiring a complete stranger to come pick us up at our house and drive our rental car for the day.  Sounds TOTALLY legit right?  I had my reservations.  Lots and lots of reservations, but I was outnumbered.  So we selected "George" and we were on our way.  I can not lie to you, this was probably the best decision we made the entire trip.  George was AWESOME.  He took us to places we would have never gone to on our own (or even known about for that matter), he brought us waters to keep us hydrated and drove us safely around Napa for the entire day.  We were so impressed we tried to book him again the following day but he was already spoken for, bummer.  If you are going to Napa this is a must, I can hook you up just let me know!

So we obviously had made NO PLANS for the day.  We left everything in George's hands.  Mind you a lot of these places you need reservations in order to get a tour or tasting.  Including the first stop we made, and note…we had no reservations.  But when you're riding with George apparently you don't need reservations!  We got an AWESOME tour from our buddy Brian here.  ( I actually have no idea what this guy's name is, I can't remember for the life of me but he looks like a Brian I think)  Brian gave us an INCREDIBLE tour of Pride Winery.  This was by far the coolest part of our trip.  The wine was spectacular, Brian was an amazing tour guide/story teller, the weather was perfect and the company I was with wasn't too shabby either.  Pure Perfection.

This is the only winery that is partly in Napa County and partly in Sonoma County.  So we obviously needed a photo opportunity hovering the line, we were officially in both Napa and Sonoma at the same time.  Are we awesome or what?

Next up was lunch.  I don't remember where we went, but the sandwiches were amazing.  I was too busy eating (and drinking) to take pictures but I did get one of the girls. We look good what can I say? 

Next up was Charter Oak Winery.  This place could not have been any more different from the first place we had gone to.  This place was LITERALLY just a house and the wine cellar was in the basement.  It is a small family run business.  Layla, the winemaker's wife, gave us our tour.  You'll see from the pictures that she is an artist by trade (as portrayed all over her clothing).  Their house was full of her work and it was nothing short of amazing.  

The wine tasting was done in their kitchen…

All of their wine is made by using this one little mechanism on the right.  Crazy right?  

On our way back home George took us to a scenic lookout to take our picture.  

That George, he knows the way straight to my heart.

Scenic lookout or not,  Julia had some business to take care of.  Again, you can take the girl out of Missouri but…

After we got home we decided it was time for a little photoshoot?  You'll notice we all could use a little freshening up at this point but none of us did.  And if you're wondering, yes this phone booth was in the driveway of the castle, one of it's many attractions!  And the tractor was definitely in the backyard.  Jealous yet?

I decided I would like to be in some of the pictures as well, so I handed the camera over to Curtis.  YIKES!  He, no kidding, took about 75 pictures and about 5 of them are in focus.  Usually Curtis does ok with my camera and my directions, this time…well I think it was just too late in the day for anyone to follow directions!  This concludes day 2, actually a dance party concluded day 2.  I'm not sure those pictures are blog worthy though.  The videos however…they just might be ;)