Girlfriends and Wine

Last night Beth and I got together for a little "Girl's Night Out" It was the Meet-up Group Wine Tasting evening at the Captain's Walk Winery downtown. It was an awesome evening with some great laughs. We both realized that we do not get together as often as we should! In fact, with how often we get together anymore, you would think that we like miles apart, but in reality, she only lives about a mile from me!

The Captain's Walk is a true gem! The history of the building can be seen in every room the staff at the winery is always eager to share this great history. One of the really cool things about this winery is that they have a glass floor in the center of the tasting room so that you can see the HUGE barrels of wine "resting" in the cellar. While we were, one of the staff was down in the cellar topping off the barrels, so that there was no air left in the top. While he was down there, he stole a sample from one of the barrels and brought it up for our group to try. They poured some of that Merlot for each of us as well as some of the same Merlot that had already been bottled. What a difference! The bottled sample was definitely much smoother and the over all taste was soooo different! If you every go somewhere and have the opportunity to sample wine straight out of the barrel like this, go for it! If really gives you a different perspective on how the taste of wine can chance with processing!


We were able to sample all of the different wines that they make right there at the Captain's Walk, as well as a few wines from their sister winery, The Von Stehiel Winery in Algoma (where we just were on Saturday for the Wine Festival!). I think there were only a few that I did not care for, and these were mostly the very dry ones. A little dry is sometimes ok, but when you get the to far dry end of the spectrum, it is just not for me!


I also HAD to buy a bottle of their Maiden Voyage wine (pictured above). Not only is it an awesome wine, but the came in the super cool, limited edition bottle that looked like a big pirate ship! TOO COOL!! Right away I thought about our freinds with Bounding Main Maiden Voyage was the name of their first album! I think I need to send them a bottle of this wine!

This group is always fun to get together with! I think every time we go out and do something , there are new faces! Where will our next adventure be? Wherever the flavors take us!

Wine, Shopping, Food and Grape Stomping

Every Fall, they gather from miles around for a stomping good time in Algoma. It is the Wet Whistle Wine Festival at the Von Stiehl Winery. This was the first year that we were able to actually make it to the festival... always too many other things going on!

We arrived just as they were getting the first round of grape stomping underway! What could be more fun than stomping on a barrel of grapes while the crowd cheers on! Everyone had their own method and style to getting the job done. In the end, it was not about how many grapes you stomped and how much juice you got, it was all about the response from the crowd! So I guess it is best of you bring a LARGE cheering section with you!!

And you cant have wine without food! From Chili to cheese, smoked salmon to brats, they had it all! The artisan bread was super too. We met up with Elle and Ellen from the Meet-up Group that we are part of - Food, Fun and Friendship. What a great afternoon! We sampled a few wines that we found to be wonderful and bought a bottle to share as we strolled the festival grounds, listening to the live music and watching the fun.

No trip to the Wine festival is complete without a stop at the actual Winery, just a few blocks from the festival grounds. For those that do not want to walk the few blocks, they have the Wine Train available for you to ride... so why walk when you can ride! At the winery we got to sample even more wine - many that they did not have at the festival, as will as purchase wine to take home.

So of course we had to buy some! But we had to bring that wine back to the car before heading back in to the festival, as no carry-in's were allowed. Cool thing... they had a golf cart that you could ride back to your car to drop off your purchases! WooHoo! Unfortunately, there was no way that 4 adults and Darrin were going to fit on the one golf cart... so we let Elle and Ellen ride with Darrin and John and I walked back. Apparently Elle and Ellen has some issues with staying ON the back of the golf cart....

Another afternoon of great fun and friends! For the complete set of pictures from today's adventures, head to our Flickr site!

Vacation Day 4 - Time to head home!

WOW - where did the last 3 days go! I guess the last day of vacation has to come sooner or later! As our family tradition, we ate breakfast at the hotel today. They usually have a pretty good breakfast buffet and it makes it easier to just eat there in between packing to go home and loading the car.

Today was the only day that we actually brought the camera to the waterpark to get some pictures. We were even having fun with the video option on the camera with a few of the water slides etc...

that is, until the camera battery went dead. Guess that was bound to happen since we forgot to bring the charger for the small camera with us! We still had John's regular camera to use, but we were not about to bring that down to the water park!

Before we left town we had one last mini-golf course to hit... Shipwreck Lagoon. At first glance, it looks like a small course, compared to the other large courses in town. This is not the case! Since the course is built up on a hill, you can't see most of it from the road! Of the 3 courses, once again ,we opted for hte hardest one! I think we really challenged ourselves this weekend! Darrin ended up slightly futher behind John but that was mainly because of 1 hole!

Another Dells vacation had to come to a close... anyone want to go to work for me tomorrow?!?!?

Easter Weekend

Easter Weekend has come and gone. It was a busy weekend but we all had fun!

Friday we spent the day doing some Geocaching around Rhinelander - this kids had fun finding the caches for this year's Winter Warrior challenge. Some of the caches were fairly easy to find, tohers, not so easy! One of them was so small that I actually touched it AND picked it up without even realizing it was what I was looking for!! We found a total of 7 of the caches in Rhinelander, now we just had to find a few in Boulder Junction and St Germain. Those are on the agenda for tomorrow!

Saturday we made the drive up to Boulder Junction where the Chamber was sponsoring an Easter Geocaching event! Darrin decided that he had to team up with Papa and find all the caches before us. It was a sunny but yet chilly day, but it was nice to get outside and enjoy the sun! Each of the caches was fairly easy to find (as long as you went the right way to get to it!) as it was a ice cream bucket filled with plastic easter eggs! Each cache contained a different color egg. The mission was to find all 12 different colored eggs. They even had some special Gold eggs hidden inside soem of the caches. We spent a lot of time laughing at ourselves falling through the knee deep (and sometimes higher) snow to get to the eggs! In the end we got a lot of great photos, had some great laughs and met some new friends!

We also comleted our Winter Warrior Cache card through the local Chamber offices! Darrin and Papa are going during the week on afternoon to turn in our cards. In total, counting the caches at the event, we found 24 caches this weekend! We have decided that we are going to try to spend more time caching this year - the last few years have been pretty busy and we just never made the time for it!

Have you ever tried having an easter egg hunt while there is still snow on the ground? This year we knew that the Easter Bunny was going to have fun trying to hide the kids eggs without leaving trails right to the eggs - there was still piles of snow in Uncle Mike's back yard! Not to mention the fact that he had to work hard to figure out where to hide the 178 eggs that he hid for the kids! Yes that is right, the Easter Bunny hid 178 eggs - both inside Uncle Mike's house as well as around his yard! That bunny got creative as there were eggs hanging from trees, lights and the gutters, as well as in foot print around the yard, in the deer feed sacks and anywhere else that he could think of! In the end, the kids found all but 6 of the eggs. We all started making bets on the date that Uncle Mike will see easter eggs in his yard

Another Monday... Gotta Love 'em

Why does the weekend never seem to last long enough? But at least this was a fun one! Maybe that's why it went by so quickly!

Friday night we went with the Cub Scouts to the Gambler's Game. I don't' mind the events like this because the parents usually stick around (unlike the other pack events where parents come, drop the kids off and leave. Meaning that those of us parents that do stay are usually trying to keep at least some sort of order!). Even though the Gamblers lost the game, we all still had a lot of fun! One of the dad's was selected to take part in the 3rd period Trivia Contest. If he answer just ONE questions correctly, he would be invited back in March for the finals. The question that he ended up with was "In the 1991 NMU played the Championship Game against which Boston School?" I KNEW the correct answer because I remember breaking my toes watching that game at my Uncle's house! I yelled up to him that the answer was D - Boston University. But apparently hecould not hear me over everyone else that was yelling that it was A - Boston College. So he went with A. Oh well. At least he did win a $10 gift certificate for Marty's Boston Crab Restaurant!

Saturday by lunchtime, the snow started falling. We were forecasted to get 4-8 inches of snow by midnight Saturday and a total of 8-10 by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around. It was nice light, fully snow that was falling so shoveling it in the afternoon was not too bad - 10 minutes and the entire driveway was done! By evening, we had some nice accumulation, but that did not stop us from going out for the evening. We had plans to go with Chad and Beth out to dinner and then to Slap Happy at Comedy City. Driving there was oh so fun! Thank goodness for 4-wheel drive! None of the roads were plowed until we were about 2 miles from the Club! Due to the snow, we opted to have dinner at the restaurant kitty-corner from the comedy club. None of us had even been there before, but we will definitely go back again! There was basically no one else in the place (go figure - the weather was bad and no one was out to eat!)! The Martini's were super (drink special of the night) and the food was good too. Great company makes any meal even better. I forgot how much I enjoy getting together with Chad and Beth. We had some great fun just hanging out like we use to do all the time!

After dinner we tromped through the piles of snow to head across the street... there was not a lot of people at the club! Granted we ended up getting there before the early Improv show even started, so people were still arriving. By the time the show started, the theater was almost full - not sure how busy the Improv show was, but Everyone made it to see Slap Happy! Another great show! Now, this was actually the 2nd time that I was seeing the show. I went Thanksgiving weekend with the rest of the family - John ended up getting sick so he didn't go with us. I told him that I would pay to see the show again! So we did! Just as good the 2nd time! We have never been disappointed with any of the stage shows there. (they write all of their own shows). We stuck around for the "late show" - they were having a Miller and Mike Show afterwards (Miller and Mike are Professional Clowns that use to work with Ringling Brothers!) So we stuck around for that too... definitely worth the time and $$!!! John and Darrin have seen some of there shows before but I never had. They are great! Ever seen anyone blow bubble by dipping their hands (wearing rubber gloves) into a bucket of bubble solution, then blowing through their fingers etc? Yup, it works!

We drove home laughing so hard that it kinda made you forget about the wintery weather that we were dealing with! At least by that time it had stopped snowing and the plows were able to catch up! The only roads that were not plowed was the backroads going to our house!

Sunday was another quiet day around the house - got some Christmas cards done, most of the rest of the holiday decorating and some baking done. Never did get to the grocery store... guess I better to that today!