Sonoma Valley... UnFOGettable!

On our second day in San Francisco we got picked up first thing by Max, our private tour guide to check out some redwood trees and vineyards. http://www.maxnapatours.com/
He took us accross the Golden Gate Bridge and up to Armstrong Woods near Sonoma Valley....


The redwood trees were absolutely beautiful. It was really cool because we were almost alone in the forest, surrounded by giants, what an awesome sight!



The first vineyard had some wonderful Sparking wines, and the best views! We looked out over the rolling hills while we sampled Iron Horse wines... http://www.ironhorsevineyards.com/
Porter Creek was the most intimate atmosphere, and probably my favorite wine! We loved smelling the different vintages, especially one where we could even smell a forest fire that happened that year, it was cool. http://www.portercreekvineyards.com/pages/home_main.html

These grapes were from Porter Creek, we couldn't resist tasting a few!

Hanging out in the vineyards at Porter Creek... Yet another picture where you can tell we are missing the kids terribly!

Arista was a beautiful winery with a cool patio, probably the most crowded of the 5 we visited with a dozen people inside :) We loved the secluded feel of Sonoma County...
http://www.aristawinery.com/arista/index.jsp

We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch at Zichichi winery. It had amazing views from the deck and it was so fun to taste the wine right out of the barrels. They sell out long before they get bottled here so most tastings they have are out of the barrel! http://www.zichichifamilyvineyard.com/

http://www.untivineyards.com/

The last winery was Unti, but due to technical (wink,wink) difficulties we weren't operating the cameras anymore at that point! All of the wine started to taste the same at that point and we were a little giddy, hence the term UnFOGettable! Coined by Christian, one of the funniest moments of the trip as we were all a little slap happy by the end of our wine tasting day :)

Upon arriving back in San Francisco Max drove us down Lombard street in his SUV! It was fun to see such a crooked street, but Max told us that it is actually not even the most crooked street in San Francisco. We spent the evening in Fisherman's Warf, checked out the scene and had Cioppino for dinner

The Rock

Saturday was our last day in the city, we stopped for irish coffee at Buena Vista before heading off to Fishermans Warf to catch the ferry to Alcatraz.... Along the way we stopped by Pier 39 to check out the sea lions, they were fun to watch!

The ferry ride had a beautiful view of the city, the golden gate bridge and alcatraz. There were so many sailboats on the water in the bay, kinda made us want to move to San Francisco just so we can spend the weekends sailing! Alcatraz looked very creepy as we approached, hundreds of birds circled the building and it was so quiet.

Locked up!
The tour was very interesting, so sad to think about what life would have been like for the prisoners, especially since they could see and hear the life going on in San Francisco just across the bay. The escape attempts were interesting to hear about as well, although they never did mention the documentary Brian saw with Sean Connery involving ex-cons taking over the prison and the military sending missles at it, hmmmmm....

After Alcatraz we decided to check out some more of the city, we got a ride up to China Town and wandered around there for awhile before hopping a trolley (or three, since we kept hopping on the wrong trolleys!) to get back to our neck of the woods...

The trolley ride was crazier than I thought it was going to be, there was barely room for us so we jumped on and held on for dear life!

We ended up back at Cellar 360 for more wine tasting...and then at Wattle Creek for even more wine tasting... and then back to the hotel to finish off the wine and sake we still had that can't go on a carry-on back home.... Unfortunately James and I had to pay for all of that wine intake the next morning when we took that bike-ride, ouch!

http://www.wattlecreek.com/

Back in Ghirardeli square it was an absolutely beautiful night, we decided to get pizza and have dinner at the firepit overlooking the bay, what a fun night to end the vacation! We had a blast and are looking forward to planning another vacation soon!

Stoked!

http://www.stokedsf.com/index.php
Our last day in San Francisco James and I decided to get a late flight out and spend some time mountain biking in Marin County. I found Rob with Stoked SF on tripadvisor and we were able to do a bike ride on top of the line Marin bikes with him. I'm not going to lie, the trip up to the top of Mt. Tam about killed me but man was it worth it! We had 360 degree views of the entire SF bay all the way out to Sonoma and Napa valleys on one side, the ocean on one side, Saulsalito and San Francisco on one side, it was amazing!

We started the morning out with a ferry ride to Saulsalito, past an enormous yaught and some really cool water-front homes. Rob picked us up from the ferry stop and then the race was on! I didn't realize when we planned everything out that we were cutting the time so close since we had to be at the bus stop for the airport at 4:10pm and the ferry dropped us off at 11:35am. Rob got us going quickly, dropping us off about 400 feet up the mountain, where we began the ride up on dirt fire roads all the way to the top!

It was so pretty to see Sonoma Valley where we toured the vineyards just a few days earlier.

James with Rob at the summit. Sounds like a measley 2400 feet compared to Colorado but it is the highest peak in the Bay area and we felt like we were on top of the world!

Coming back down we did single track trails with elbow pads, knee pads and all. It was crazy fun and really neat to learn the technique from a pro! We had amazing views of the ocean the whole way down....felt like we could see forever

Finally finished! We made it to the bus stop with no less than 7 minutes to spare! Whew, What a marathon day, but as Rob would say, it was epic!

First day of school!

We enrolled the girls in a pre pre-school class called Magical Mornings. It is for 90 minutes twice a week and the first day was yesterday. The girls did great, their favorite thing was bringing along their backpacks!




Lylah came over and we all went together for their first day, very cute!
Love the attitude!

Their little classroom, they each have a little cubby with their name on it to put their backpack in.

Keystone

The condo remodel is finally finished so we have enjoyed spending several weekends up there again this summer. One of my favorite things is stopping at the campsites along Keystone Gulch road and building a campfire... We had a good photo session this last time.

Tiny Town

When it got too hot in the city we headed up to the mountains looking for something fun to do. James had the best idea all summer to take the tiny tots to Tiny Town... they absolutely loved it!
There was a little village with shops and houses, this was funny because it looks like Bella's trying to break in and Sophie was cracking up!
Bella and Pete have always been best buddies, it was really cute when we saw them flirting in the back of the jail cell!
The tiny town train ride was very cute. It went by every 10 minutes while we were there and every single time all of the kids would line up and waive to the train as it passed by. The train went past lots of cute little places.

Sweet Sophie

Sweet Bella

Peeking in the windows with Pete

Watching the tiny town train go by

After Tiny Town we stopped at a farm where they had a candy dispenser full of food to feed the animals with. Of course the kids thought that was pretty cool!

What a fun day!