October 19

What a great day we had, up at 7:00 to put out coffee for the guest.  Then after a great sunrise it was time to watch everyone hooking up to leave the park for Paso Robles, CA.  The first ones were out by 9:00 AM for a 102 mile drive. to the Vines RV Resort in Paso Robles. The last one out was us at 11:00 AM, and it was a nice drive after we were on 101.  Set the cruise control at 56 and went just about 80 miles before we had to pull off for the park.  This park has only been open for just two years and is really nice.  All of the parking areas are cement and really nice, I would give it a 10,10,10.

 As we were sitting down for our Pizza Party I noticed this great sun set.

 This gives you a little bit at how nice this park is.  After our Pizza Party, we had our travel brief and we did our White Elephant.  Every rig was to bring something that they may not need but someone else may like to have it.  We asked not to spend more than $5.00 for the gift then put them in a paper bag.  It was a lot of fun and we had some great gifts from Wine to pot holders and a bunch of DVD's.

 But the best was this Turkey Hat, Teresa made David put it on.

 But then David said that seens she picked it she had to put it on!!!

Everyone had a great time.  Tomorrow we head out on a bus trip to Hearst Castle, we haven't been there in a long time.  Looking forward to the trip.

October 18

This morning we woke up to know power.  We are to go on a bus tour today down to Monterey Aquarium and Cannery Row.  So after firing up the gen set and making coffee for the guest, we left for Monterey at about 9:45 AM.  At first we heard that the power would be back on by 9:30 AM, well that came and went with no power.  So we opened the windows for the boys and off we went on our tour.

Our first stop was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it has the rating as the best Aquarium in the world.

The weather is great, the temp is only about 70 degrees which makes for a good day.
here are a few things that we seen inside.

We didn't stay here very long because we wanted to go down to Bubba Gumps for lunch on Cannery Row.

As we were walking down to here we noticed that a lot of shops not opened, and low and behold the power was out here in Monterey.  So the only place that had power was the Aquarium.  So we head back there to get something to eat before we head out on the rest of our bus tour.

 We went by a lot of Golf Coarse on the 17 mile Pebble Beach Drive.  Our next stop was at the Migrating Monarch Butterflies Nesting Trees, this area is protect for the Monarch Butterflies.  It was neat seeing a few of them here.  They say that during the Migration that 100's of them can be seen here.  They start showing up around the first of October  and by November they are covering these trees.  Here are just a few of the pictures I took.

 We were here for about 20 minutes then off we went for the drive on 17 mile drive.

Our next stop was at the oldest Cypress along the coast.

 Once again we were back on the bus towards Carmel, so the wife's can go shopping for a couple of hours.

 The wife's may be happy but I don't know about the husbands.

 At least our two wife's came out of this store with no bags.

 This dog made a great door stop.

 We all had a great day and the wife's didn't brake the bank and we all had a great time.  Tomorrow we move again down the coast about a 100 miles to a town called Paso Robles, CA.  We will be here 2 nights with a trip to the Hearst Castle.  We haven't been there in over 30 years, so it will be a great visit again.

October 17

We have been a little busy lately, but we are currently in Monterey staying at the Dunes RV Park.  We are right next to the coast.  I am going to back up a few day to when we were at Yosemite National Park.  We spent one day driving around Yosemite and had a great time.

 We stopped along the way at El Capitan to watch a few climbers going up the face.

 When we stopped at Bridalveil Fall and only seen just a small amount of water coming over it.

 We drove up to Tunnel View to see the whole valley.

We enjoyed a great day in the park and here are a few pictures of some animals we seen.

The park has really been dry lately with no rain in site, I hope they don't have anymore fires.  While we were their we didn't see any sign of fires around where we were.  But we were lucky to see a few animals. I missed a picture of a few deer but these guys were really wanting a picture.

Here are a few of our guest enjoy the park.
While at our camp grounds we had a few turkeys wondering around.

Every morning we seen them coming out of the trees and walking around the camp.

This is our group after a great breakfast at Miner's Roadhouse, look at all the smiling faces, they must have had a great breakfast.
Tomorrow we are going on a bus tour of Monterey Aquarium, Cannery Row, Fisherman's Wharf ,
Pacific Grove, Migrating Monarch Butterflies Nesting Trees and 17-Mile Drive & Carmel City Tour, it should be a great day.

October 12

Today we left the campground for Ironstone Vineyards Tour & Wine Tasting.

This is a big plantation, here there is over 7,000 acres here at this location.  They do a lot more than grow grapes here, they have a big Museum, Amphitheater, Weddings in the large gardens, and a beautiful music room, and yes a big gift shop and wine tasting room.

 We started our tour in the gift shop and wine tasting bar, no sampling yet.

 We got everyone together out side to start tour.

The flowers in these gardens are beautiful.

 This has to be one of the high lights of this tour, inside we got to see a small amount of the quartz that was mined in this area.

A little bit of history about this next few pictures. On December 26, 1992, owners of the Sonora Mining Corporation mine near Jamestown, Tuolumne County, received an unexpected Christmas present.  Excavations in the company's Crystalline mine uncovered a "pocket" of Crystalline leaf gold.
Approximately 1,568 ounces of specimen gold were found.  The largest piece, the Kautx specimen, weighs in at 44 pounds of gold.  This is the largest specimen of crystalline gold in the world.  The specimen consists of many layers of leaf gold separated by rock consisting mostly of clay, quartz, maraposite, decomposed shale and pyrite.

I should say it is in a vault and be hind a very thick peace of glass.

We were looking for a way to get it out but no luck.  They say that this small peace of gold is priceless!!!!

 After the tour of the museum we took a short walk to the wine celler where all of the wine barrels are stored.

 All of these are waiting to go into the cavern for storage.

 These caverns were carved out of the rock here and covers over with a covering to keep it from deteriorate, this help keep it a constant temperature of about 55 degrees if I recall correctly.  They have over a million gallons of wine being cured.

This small water fall helps keep the humidity at about 78%.  They also have weddings down here also.

This is were they process all of the grapes, they are just finishing up with this years crop.

 This is some of the gardens were they have weddings, if you notice the coyote cuts out in the field.  They are there to keep the  Canada Geese out of the grass, and it is working just fine.  They move them every day so they don't see them in the same place.

This is looking out into the area from the Amphitheater, they say that over 7000 people is a full house and they have big name groups here.  They average over 20 different groups through out the summer.
Our next stop is the Music room with a pipe organ that is as big as the one in the Slat Lake City for sound.

If you are ever in this area make this a stop to see for a Vineyard, it has so much to offer.  It is located just outside of Murphy's, CA., also stop and take a look at this neat little town.  There are a lot of small shops to look into and a great Marisolio Olive Oil Tasting Bar.  Tomorrow we head to Yosemite, CA.