Wrapping up our Buellton and California Stay

October 17, 2009
Buellton, CA


As always, click on any picture to enlarge it...

Wow, the week has passed quickly! Once the rains ended, we did some shopping to make sure we have enough supplies, and managed to work in a few more wineries. Surprised?

Wednesday was still cloudy and showery after Tuesday's heavy rains, but we decided to venture out anyway in the afternoon. We headed north on US-101 to Santa Maria, where I had a coupon I needed to use at Best Buy (new cable modem for the AZ house - more on that later) and we made a supply stop at Costco. We did one of their rotisserie chickens for dinner; always good and enough for leftovers. On the way back to Buellton, the skies started to clear and by evening the starts were out. Storm over.

Thursday was a brilliant sunny day; not a cloud was to be seen. We dropped off some of the Costco loot at Geri's sister's place in Lompoc after having brunch at Ellen's, a local Danish-oriented (cuisine, not pastry) breakfast/lunch place right next to the RV park. We've been going there for years, usually once each visit. This gave us the strength for wine tasting, so after a quick stop in Solvang (Danish-themed "village") we headed for Los Olivos. After a stop at the local gourmet shop, we aimed for Lincourt Vineyards, one of the "sister wineries" to Foley, where we stopped on Monday. It was named for the owner's two daughters, so that term really applies. Geri found a neat driveway gate across the street, then we tasted; we bought; we joined their wine list. we also got a recommendation or two of other places to visit.

It was another beautiful day on Friday, although warmer. We left the air conditioning on for the pups, and headed over to Solvang to pick up wines we had already purchased from the "wine club" at D'Alfonso-Curran wines. We picked up a year's worth of wines (three paid-for shipments, plus the November release that'll be shipped out in a few weeks). Good deal. From there, we headed to one of our favorite wine routes, the "Foxen Canyon Wine Trail", which heads north from Los Olivos. We stopped at Foxen, which has built a whole new winery/tasting room near their old place, lovingly referred to as "the shack". We had a nice tasting and picked up a few more bottles for the collection there, then headed back to a relatively new winery, Tres Hermanas. This place is great: for every few bottles of wine you buy, you get to stay in their on-site RV park "out back behind the barn". Now, that's our kind of place! We headed out toward Santa Barbara for dinner, catching up with Geri's niece, Cindy, her husband, Mike, and their daughter, Jennifer, for a great dinner.

Today was another hot day. It's "never" this hot here. We headed back toward Lompoc today, stopping at Geri's sister's to say "so long" to Kathy and Lloyd for this trip, then visiting two wineries right in Lompoc's "wine ghetto". This is the name given to an industrial park of warehouse condos set on the outskirts (OK, the "in"-skirts, since it's the first place you see when you get into town), "behind the Home Depot". We had an appointment to visit Black Sheep Finds, a small husband/wife operation making some nice wines from purchased grapes (we "found" them when we bought a bottle of their "Genuine Risk" Merlot when we were on our recent caravan, in Truckee of all places). We tasted a couple of barrel samples (can't wait for the 2009 Carneros Pinot Noir) and ended up with a mixed case of Bordeaux and Rhône varietals. From there, we traveled 200 feet to our next stop, Fiddlehead, where we tasted some very nice Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs, met the winemaker, joined another wine "club", and added a few more bottles to the collection. Thank goodness this was our last winery stop!

When we got home, I did a lot of the departure activities (dumping and pumping) so we'll have a clean start tomorrow morning. We headed to dinner tonight at one of our long-time favorites, the Hitching Post ("as seen in Sideways"), where Geri had a great grilled artichoke and we both had steaks, coupled with a 2004 Hitching Post Pinot Noir. Great match! After dinner, we finished up our pre-departure activities for the night, and we're ready for an early (7:00 AM) departure tomorrow...