SO...back on topic again. I've uploaded a bunch more pictures of our activities over the last few days. There is also a gallery of pictures I took at the RSI event Friday night and the IPD event Saturday. The weather has been unbelievable, if not uncomfortable. The area has seen record high temperatures over the last couple of days. Yesterday Portland was 95 degrees and I heard Tillamook, a town on the coast was over 100. Crazy temperatures for this time of year. Fortunately the house we're living in has been retrofitted with central air conditioning so we've managed to stay reasonably comfortable at night. Here are a few more pics...
This is one of few shots I got of the place we stayed at or, more accurately, the view from the place we stayed at last Monday night. It's so mesmerizing, sitting watching those big rollers crash on to the beach...
This is the place we've been staying for the last few nights.
Monday will be our last night here and then we have two nights further south on the coast again at Gold Beach...
This is how we found our way around. Had it not been for the GPS we likely would not have found some of the spots we did. More on those in a bit. Having the maps on the laptop helped a lot in the planning of the day...
A few more shots of the inside of the house...
It's got a huge back yard...
We've done a few winery tours. OK...we've done a LOT of winery tours. We have lucked out though. One of the first tours we did was at a winery called Sokol Blosser. They make Evolution wine which is available in Calgary and one of Ian and Joan's favorites. It also (very coincidentally) happened to be the closest winery to our house (less than 5 minutes drive) and was the first winery we visited. When we were there we asked one of the gentlemen what wineries he would recommend. He pulled out a map of the wineries in the areas and circled the places he buys wine from. While we haven't hit all of them, we have not been disappointed with any of his recommendations. Here are some pictures of a few...
This is inside the barrel storage room of Sinnean Winery. This was a recommendation from Jonathan at RSI. I didn't realize until later that he worked there for a period of time. It was a bit of a unique experience because the prior wineries we had toured had nice modern tasting rooms. This? Have a look...
Most of the wineries offer 4 or 5 varieties to taste and some college student offering "expertise". Sinnean offered these plus one other...12 in total, and we were talking to the winemaker himself... Just an outstanding experience and yes, we spent some money on some very nice wines. Notice the "corks". This winery uses glass corks with a silicon o-ring to seal. The inside of the bottle has a groove the o-ring fits into and provides a seal. Uncorking is a simple matter of removing a tin "seal" and then popping the cork with your thumb. Resealing is simply pushing the cork back in until it "clicks" into place. Outstanding...
Growing wine grapes is a bit of a science to say the least. Since most require a certain type of soil and that soil is found at higher elevations throughout the valley, most wineries are at the tops of the hills meaning most had beautiful views from them. I took way too many pictures of the scenery to upload all of them. Here are a few samples...
One of the recommendations was the Brickhouse Winery. Another outstanding experience; almost as much because of the host and the ambiance. The tasing room is inside the same building as where they store their barrels. It's an old converted barn. Antiques everywhere. Open beams. Just a very cool place. The wines were superb as well...
The reason for the name of the winery...
A couple of pictures of the Anderson Family Vineyards. Tiny winery. Superb hosts (Mr and Mrs Anderson) and some lovely wines...
Ian...after a hard day tasting wines...
There are more pictures uploaded to the gallery as well so browse...
Yesterday was the IPD Garage Sale and car show. I've got a bunch of pictures of that as well but I've already spent over an hour doing these. I'll do those later.
Later today we're hosting a few of the "locals". Jonathan from RSI and his wife, Kyle, James and possibly Pat Dickman (tuff240 on T'Bricks and owner of MadMax). Looking forward to that. Tomorrow we plan to visit the Evergreen Aviation museum in McMinnville.
http://www.sprucegoose.org/ Should be an interesting experience. I didn't realize until I just looked at their website that Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose is there...
More later...time for coffee...
