San Fransiciso, wine tasting, and the small town of Willits, CA...

San Francisco, CA Lucas was so nice and brave to take on our three kids by himself for a few days so I could take a quick trip to visit my best friend Melissa in California. Her, her husband Alex, and her two kids, Emma and Jacob, lived in Arizona, but just recently moved to be closer to her family in Northern California. So, of course I have been dying to go visit her...and it just worked out for me to go. I flew into Oakland which is just about 20 minutes away from San Francisco so we decided what a better time to tour the big city and have a girls night out on the town!

There is an overwhelming amount of things to see and do in San Francisco, and we only had one day, so we had to choose carefully on what to do...our first stop was Pier 39, better known as Fisherman's Wharf. We ate at this really cool bar and grill and caught up over yummy sandwiches and Mai Tai's! After lunch we walked around the Pier and window shopped. It was so fun and relaxing!

It's so funny looking at these two pictures of Melissa and I, because we noticed that we were wearing practically the same outfit!! We looked like twins and didn't even notice it all day! Another thing that we didn't know was that it was freezing there, (about 60 degrees, that's freezing to me) and I packed mostly summer clothes... good thing Melissa brought two white sweaters! :) Alcatraz Island.
The two of us on the Pier with Alcatraz Island in the background.

Our next stop was China Town! We were so excited to go explore that, but when we got there, we were some what disappointed. We blamed some of it on the fact that we had no idea where we were going and we could have been on a bad street, but it was very dirty, very smelly and very not what we expected! There's wasn't much there except for alot of produce, raw fish, and weird knic knac stores! Where was the "knock off" Coach bag's? :)
Here I am being silly in a knic knac store! :)
Here we are in our hotel room which was very modern and contemporary. We loved it, in fact we took more pictures of the hotel than we did San Francisco! :) That night we ended up in "Little Italy" for dinner... and I say "ended up" because you should of seen us, we were two lost girl's in a great big city..taking taxi's, that when we arrived the driver was hoping we converted over to the Islam religion and buses that had more stops and names we could keep track of and cable cars that scared us with a weird smelly bum and a flashy gay guy...we just were hoping we would end up in the right place and safe!!! But our restaurant that we went to that night was amazing and so good. It was a fun and interesting night!

This is in the hotel lobby...



Leaving San Francisco, you get to drive over the famous Golden Gate Bridge. What a cool thing to do and something I'll always remember.

We had about a 3 hour drive to Melissa's house from San Francisco...and what a beautiful drive. You pass through Napa Valley, and there's wineries one after another just about the whole way. Just beautiful! I couldn't stop taking pictures!
We couldn't help ourselves and had to pull into one for a tasting. Wine Sale!? Who could resist, right? :)
This was taken out in front of the Asti Winery (Seller 8 wine)

It was our first wine tasting experience, and what a fun thing to do! We felt like true adults...after all we are 30, so I guess we were due for a wine tasting!! :) We plan to do it again sometime with a bunch of our friends, how fun would that be!?

Tasting a fresh grape right off the vine...mmmm! So good!
They were so juicy and sweet. The best grape I have ever tasted! They were so pretty, they almost looked fake! After the winery, we came across a strawberry stand too, so we stopped and bought a container of fresh picked strawberries. Yum! Yum! Some good wine, and fresh strawberries, how could we go wrong!

This is the entrance to Melissa and Alex's little town, Willits. It's such a cute little town, filled with small boutiques, cute restaurants, and beautiful tall pine and redwood tree's.
This is the front of Melissa and Alex's beautiful mountain home. The whole house is surrounded by thick forest. I got up there and could not stop taking pictures of everything! We even saw two different families of deer with brand new babies on the side of the road. They are really friendly, they just stop and look at you, they don't run away like the ones up here on the Ranch do. Before I came to visit, they had a nosey bear that kept getting into their garbage every night, but we never did see it... darn! Maybe that's a good thing?

Standing on their wrap around deck...look at the tree's behind us! It couldn't get more beautiful! It was like staying in a log cabin in the beautiful mountains...it was so nice! Next time Lucas and the kids have to come!!


Alex made this awesome swing for the kids in their front yard. It's so cool because when you swing out on it, it looks like you going off a cliff into the big tree's. So fun!!

The last day I was there we celebrated Melissa's daughter, Emma's and Melissa's sister, Kaitlyn's birthday, who have the same birthday! It was so nice to get together with her parents, and brother Brandon. They all are like family to me.

This trip was so special, and makes me do nothing but smile and laugh...we have some great memories!