Vacation Recap: Day 2 & 3

After tandem biking and filling up with Bouchon macaroons, we headed to Yosemite National Park for two days. The drive there was pretty stunning. We passed dozens of fruit stands, almond tree fields, and beautiful fields of burnt, yellow grasses....

To reach the campsite in Yosemite Valley, we had to take the winding way in - a two lane highway cut into the side of hills and mountains, Positano Coast style.... 

And then we entered a few small, Old-West-style towns... 

And then finally, we arrived....

After a few more miles of driving, we arrived in Curry Village, our cute and pretty luxurious camp site

The village itself was pretty over the top in terms of camping. They had a main information and check in building, a lounge, a seperate hall for dinner and breakfast, a pizza patio with accompanying bar, a grill, a massive general store/gift shop and even a "mountain shop", which essentially was an excuse to sell over-priced Mountain Hardware and Patagonia stuff. 

Our tents, however, were absolutely perfect... 

Isn't it the most romantic tent you've ever seen?! 

I thought so at least.

After settling into our surroundings, we eyed up a raft rental spot and decided a little river R&R was exactly what the day needed. So late in the afternoon, we grabbed a kayak-raft-thing, a couple of paddles and headed down river. Sadly, because of the likelihood of throwing it into the water if we brought it, we left the camera and our phones behind, leaving us with little pictures. But let me just give you a mental image of Bill and I stopping at a sandy beach and soaking in the sun in our rafty-thing. Pretty sweet living. 

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But Yosemite wasn't all sweet living, as Day 3 would prove. We decided to do an all-day hike, which sounded absolutely fine to me at the time. 

We chose the Upper Yosemite Falls hike, which went to the top of one of the water falls, in 3.5 miles and back the same way. I should probably have looked at the falls before we climbed them, and taken in the fact that they were the tallest falls in North America. But no, I looked like this instead... 

We started in and pretty steadily gained a lot of elevation. 

In fact, pretty quickly our view became a panorama of the valley floor and a nice view of Half Dome - the tallest peak. 

The hike is mostly a bunch of switch-backs and as we took switch-back after switch-back we rose out of the trees and into the sunny rocks above - sunny rocks which carried my least favorite worldly creature: the lizard. For those who don't know, I have an irrational phobia (like any phobia I suppose) of lizards. No other reptile, just lizards. The first one I saw scared me, but I calmed myself as I've learned how to do over the years. However, the next 30 we encountered were slightly overwhelming and might have sent me to tears. 

I almost turned back completely, thinking I could not climb to the top while hyperventilating and crying, but large groups of hikers started passing us on the trails and with them a miraculous thing happened: the lizards scattered and hid. Following the crowds, the way back up was much easier, though certainly no less annoying for Bill who had to hear me question behind him every 5 seconds, "Do you see one? Do you see one? How about now? Now? What about now?" 

Somehow he didn't strangle me or push me off the edge. 

In fact, we made it up to the first look-out point, a mile and a half in, still pretty happy. 

We got closer to the falls, and at one point stood next to them, feeling the water spraying onto our faces. At this point I was pretty tired, but worse was my right knee which was going from an uncomfortable stiffness to  an aching pain pretty quickly. Soon I started favoring my left leg, which by the time we got to the top, was in pain as well. 

There were several points I thought I'd let Bill continue alone, but I persevered, knowing I'd probably regret it on the way back down. 

Bill's favorite part of this story, which I'm loathed to tell, is that he was hopeful that when we got to the top, I'd realize it was all worth it while overlooking the valley floor. Sadly, my response looking down was, "That wasn't worth it." Yes, I sound like a terrible person, and I surely am for ruining my love's adventure, but to my defense I was in a lot of pain and the view wasn't as majestic as it was from other parts of the hike. Even Bill agreed that looking down was not nearly as wondrous as looking up.  

On the way down, I was possibly even more of a mess, trying to move my crippled knees over the sliding rock trail and fighting off an emerging migraine. Extremely grateful to see the valley floor again, we sluggishly went back to our camp site where I crashed for several hours before even showering myself off. 

Bill however, finally got to enjoy a little Yosemite without a crippled, lizard-freaked girl by his side and went to take some pretty glorious pictures of Half Dome in the setting sun. 

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Stay tuned for Days 4, 5, and 6 coming up shortly! Don't worry, there won't be more hiking and Megan doesn't ruin anything more! 

Weekend Update

Don't worry, we'll be getting back to the vaca recap shortly, but I didn't want to skip this last weekend, which was a busy one! 

Friday night, Bill's little sister, Sam, came down from Boston to hang out. Well, actually she came to run the Warrior Dash, a mud run, with Bill because she's kind of kick-ass. Friday night, however, we all went to see Michael Kiwanuka, who is a pretty amazing artist. 

The next morning we headed up to the Poconos for the Warrior Dash. Last year we were pretty slow, but this year, Sam and Bill cut their time by twenty minutes! 

Look at those muddy, B.A.M.F.'s (bad-ass mother f***ers)! 

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After we all came home and took naps, we ate a delicious dinner of watermelon-jalapeno soup, steak, and rice salad. Yum! 

The next day, we headed to Bill's sister, Liss's, house for a Father's Day BBQ. 

We ate lots of good food, played some fun lawn games and lounged about. Pretty perfect Sunday. 

The spread!

Bags and ladder ball! 

   

How was your Father's Day?! 

Father's Day

I just got back from celebrating Father's Day with Bill's family (which is my family now as well) and while I love them all dearly, I miss my own family 886 miles away. Today especially, I missed my father.

My dad has to be not only one of the best fathers, but one of the best men out there. He's been a great man to know, love, and be inspired by and I think I'm the luckiest girl in the world. 

Here's to all the great dads, mine in particular. 

Happy Father's Day everyone! 

Vacation Recap: Day 1

We're back! And with lots of pictures and a few fun stories (and harrowing adventures).

The first day (last Friday), we flew into San Francisco and grabbed our rental car (which might be its own harrowing adventure, but let's move on to something more fun). After navigating San Francisco for a few much needed, forgotten items like a camera card (duh!) and a pair of jeans (another duh!) we took our little rental car up north to Napa wine country!

We immediately drove through Napa where we would be staying and eating that evening to the town of Yountville about 10 miles north. Yountville, I knew, was home to Thomas Keller's many restaurants. Keller has to be one of the most famous American chefs today (and I sold countless numbers of his cookbooks and culinary items while working at Williams-Sonoma, which was started only miles away itself) so I was pretty excited to get to see and maybe eat at his restaurants Ad Hoc, The French Laundry, and Bouchon Bakery. But before we did any of that, we had to find our bike rental shop in Yountville, which led us to explore the town's unbelievably compact usage of wealth. That little town was like Disney's version of wine country. In fact, one of the reasons we couldn't find the bike shop was because they said they were near a "gas station"...

Well, besides the nicely hidden pumps, this super nice cafe didn't read "gas station" from the road. We passed it twice without realizing its indented purpose. 

After grabbing our tandem bike, which was incredibly nice, we began our first adventure: how to put Megan at ease on a bicycle she couldn't control. As many of you already know, I had forgotten how to bike after not getting on one since age 9. So last year when I finally retried the two-wheeler, it was a little scary. I did ok, but I didn't ride again until last week. So not only did I have to get used to being on a bike again, which wasn't that hard, I had to get used to being on the back of a bike I couldn't control.... and my pilot was used to going 20 miles per hour on a bike while zipping through lanes of taxi cabs. So when we first began pedaling away, I might have been a little nervous. 

We began to pass beautiful stretches of vineyard in the valley as we made our way to our first winery, Robert Sinskey Vineyards, which I had to focus on so as to not drive Bill crazy with my screams of "Too fast! Too fast!". 

Luckily, it began to get a little easier to trust Bill and our speed and the biking actually started to become quite fun! It only got better after our first winery. 

Robert Sinskey Vineyards was simply stunning. Their beautiful, Mediterranean-style building incorporated amazing vistas into its charm. The simple tasting we did inside, called a flight of wines, was a good introduction. It provided a nice breath of wines, a few little companion bites, and a very nice and informative hostess. 

But that was nothing compared to our next stop: Silverado Vineyards. 

(Bill and I walking the bike up the steep road to Silverado Vineyards) 

I had signed us up for a winery tour here simply because their facilities looked really nice and, more importantly, their winery tour cost the same as most tastings. We really lucked out with more than price, however, as no one else signed up for our tour time, giving us a private tour of the winery from our tour guide Jenn, who was a sweet and entertaining woman who looked a lot like Julianne Moore. 

We started the tour with a few glasses of wine out on their patio balcony which had an incredible view... 

Jenn soon joined us on the patio to give a little background to the winery. Normally history lessons are interesting enough but this one was especially fun. Apparently, Silverado Vineyards was one of the first wineries in the valley started by none other than Walt Disney's daughter! (Apparently they get a lot of crazy Disney fans there that they have to screen who they give tours to. We passed). The story goes that Diane Disney married Ron Miller who at the time played professional football for the L.A. Rams (now the St. Louis Rams!). He got seriously injured one season and so Walt Disney asked him to come work for the family business. Soon Ron began to run the show and is apparently responsible for all of the great things to happen to Disney over the last twenty years, namely, Pixar. However, when the current CEO came in and kicked out Ron (and Pixar), the Millers washed their hands of the entire thing and retired to California wine country. At the time, they were one of the first property buyers and were encouraged to buy by Mrs. Disney herself (who bought her own property here as well). Thirty years later, they still run a family business that doesn't advertise itself as a Disney vineyard at all (except for the original Ratatouille poster which was based on Thomas Keller's The French Laundry!). 

Anyway, after getting a better idea of the story behind the production, we went on to view the works- everything from their large storage areas with thousands of oak barrels of wine to the bottling process... 

All in all, it was a pretty incredible tour with a great host. We promptly bought two bottles of wine after our after-tour tasting and started on the bottle of Rose that evening. 

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Unable to get reservations at The French Laundry or Ad Hoc, I found a great little restaurant called Angele in Napa. I was smitten. The french country style was paired with modern touches to create the most beautiful eatery I've seen in a while... 

(Photos courtesy of Angele Restaurant because we didn't bring our camera to dinner) 

We sat next to that little blue, French-country window with the darling olive trees which looked out over a quaint river and looked at the bar with these amazing yellow-covered bentwood chairs. 

And don't get me started on the food. Amazing. I had quail and the skin was done to such a perfection that it tasted like butter in my mouth. Oh! So good. 

And we did finally get to try a little Thomas Keller after all when we headed to Bouchon the next morning for  breakfast. 

Obviously I got a few macaroons and savored them the rest of the trip. 

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So that was Day 1 in Napa. Stay tuned for Days 2 and 3 in Yosemite for a few stellar pictures and some entertaining stories.