Valentines in Napa Valley

So finally got home from a crazy fun weekend up in the Napa Valley Wine Country with Ashley. It was an amazing trip, save for the ending where I had some problems with my flight and ended up having to spend an additional night in Oakland, and then fly out at 6 am the next morning and go straight to work that hurt a little bit!

So flew from San Diego to Oakland Intl. at 9pm on Friday night, Ashley's mom picked us up from the airport and took us to their house in Pleasanton(spl?), Cali. It was amazing, a great pool, hot tub, family pictures everywhere, loved it. The town was really cute too, kind of a small town feeling reminded me a lot of Lehi back home, but that it was clearly growing and people were coming in and over running it, like every good small town. :( We were pretty tired from the late flight and a long day of work for both of us, we talked to the family some and then headed to bed because we were driving to Napa Valley at 8 am to get to our first Winery Tour at 10:30 at Frog's Leap. Woke up early, (Oh how I love mornings.) had some delicious Breakfast caserole which her mother made, then headed out to Napa. I as dad would put it "rested my eyes" for a short period during the drive down there and we headed straight to the tour. The Napa Valley was really gorgeous, grapevines, rolling hills everything about it was just really authentic looking and cute, I loved it.
Hit a few wineries, toured the country-side some, checked into Motel, the flowers I ordered and were supposed to be in the room of course weren't, because the staff at the "El Bonita Motel" was incompetent. (Stay tuned for my TripAdvisor posting) The place over all was really cute though and the rooms were great, small fridge, microwave, couple of wine glasses it was perfect.
Anyhow, enough rambling, the pictures can describe it all.

Just a tiny sampling of the huge Mustard fields and Vineyards they have in Napa, there is just so much to look at, there are 100's of Wineries and Vineyards all looking just this beautiful it's hard to not just stop looking around or wanting to stop at everyone.

Here is me and Ashley at the top of the Sterling Winery, it was a really nice one, we rode a Gondola up to the top of the Winery itself then toured around the winery and walked out on to this patio which has an overlook of the entire valley.

Here we are in the Sterling Winery again, sitting by the fire in their tasting area. It was rainy and kind of cold the whole time we were up there, so we were happy to be by the fire and getting warmed up!



Here is a picture of a Castle, I don't remember the exact name of the place, (EDIT: Castello di Amorosa Winery) but it was a 1600 Castle which they have refurbished to be a Winery now, it was something like Castille de Audubon or something along those lines, I'll have to look it up later, but it was a really fun winery.

And Last picture, but actually first stop of the trip was at Frog's Leap, probably our best tour, walked around the whole winery, got some of the history and had a great time. Also where I was informed that I looked like Jim Halpert from The Office and that I wasn't allowed anywhere near this guy's girlfriend because she would be all over me. I can't help but see that as a compliment :)