California Raw, Day 8

Had a great day doing the balloon ride today. We got up at the painful hour of 4am, which was tough since we didn't get to bed until midnight.

The balloon ride today was awesome. And it single handedly covered the things we wanted to do in Napa Valley.

Everyone met at 5:30am in étoile restaurant at the Domain Chandon vineyard for a continental breakfast before the balloon ride. A full buffet breakfast was served when we returned. So right there we got to visit a vineyard and nice restaurant in the valley. Check! (The grounds there are lovely -- gardens, rock art, flowers, birds chirping way. People were arriving via limo for tours and tastings, neither which we did, as we were leaving.)

We also got to see the entire Napa region, Sonoma region, et.al. from the air. But even better, our ride went particularly far (we're told they only go that far about a dozen times a year) and we landed in the Ravenswood vineyard and farm. So driving out we got to see back roads through the region that we couldn't have seen before. (They had to hunt down someone to unlock the gate to let us out.) Check!

It turns out that you can't really steer in a balloon. Winds blow in different speeds and directions depending on your height. And the balloonists know which houses/farms/estates do not welcome balloons, which ones do, and which will allow an emergency landing if necessary. (Wherever they do land, a bottle of champagne is left as a gift. I'm sure that helps things with the land owners quite a bit.)


Picture 73 shows were the first balloon landed. Yes, that's somebody's backyard. We were in a van chasing them like tornado chasers. That is also were our flight, the second/last flight of the day took off. Picture 86 shows were we actually landed -- in a crop field. The person in the tractor in picture 87 offered to put everyone to work; I believe he was the brother of the owner.

We came back to the room and basically went back to bed. This evening we went to Sonoma and had a nice time walking around the square. (I somehow forgot my camera and therefore missed the sunset shot of the day.) Most things were closed by the time we got there but the weather was lovely (a lot of other people thought so too), we had a nice dinner, and it was a very peaceful way to end the day.

We've decided not to go into SF tomorrow. We had sort of a revelation while having dinner with Nik and Kelly that there will be a lot of walking in SF, we can't really drive the car everywhere. Ordinarily that'd be okay, but Mom's back is acting up right now so a day of walking doesn't seem like a great idea.

But this gets us up the coast a little faster. And if we make up a full day anywhere we'll have time to shoot past Seattle and see Vancouver or Victoria, and I know Mom would love to see either of those. (We brought our passports just in case!)

Twenty-two new pictures.