Spirits and snow!!!!

Vanessa and Allison (a friend of hers from W & L) came into town on Friday night. As I had Saturday off (yes! A day off!), we took a mini road trip east of Sac to Amador Co., which has some wonderful (and less expensive than Napa/Sonoma) wineries to try, as well as Calaveras Co. for some (snow) hiking! Luckily, Shomir was along so there would not be any risk of a tipsy driver (I am a LIGHTWEIGHT!)

Here is the group of us at Drytown Cellars (ironic name), our first stop.

We then proceeded to drive up into the Sierras near Arnold for some hiking. None of us was expected snow on the ground and in the air! It was like 32 degrees up there! We did some trudging around in the Calaveras Big Trees State Park and saw some majestic Sequoias (I still love Big Trees!).

A real path??

Sap Icicles!
Will he ever learn to smile (with teeth) in pictures? :)

I realize I don't have any pics of us sisters together! My bad!

After we thawed in the Warming Hut (with complimentary Hot Cocoa-- mmm!), it was onto Ironstone Winery in the town of Murphys (they had a big St. Patty's day celebration going on!) for more tasting :)

They also had a beautiful Daffodil display, as well as beautiful daffodils outside.

How do you judge these?

And it was more pretty CA scenery... here's an interesting-looking cloud we saw on the beautiful drive home...

And here, for no particular reason other than it's beautiful, is a picture of Yosemite in winter/spring, courtesy of Sonia when the 2nd and 3rd years went to the Family Medicine Educational conference there a weekend ago. Can you see the bird in the middle?

The day concluded with some dinner Amy, Phi, and Arash joining us for El Salvadorean food and then playing good old Time's Up. Fun times!

Today, Vanessa and Allison are headed to Monterey for some more CA fun, Shomir goes to SF to visit his sister and nieces, and I'm back on L and D for another 24 (29) hour call . . .(Let's have some deliveries!!!!)