Dawn's World

I haven't blogged for a while but I wrote this entry and had it in draft for a long time... firgured I'd publish it finally...

It was good times Memorial weekend over in Eastern Washington as 10 of us set out to tour the wineries there.  There were many many adventures, some of which I'm confident I don't remember clearly but I'll do my best to capture them here for your reading pleasure.

Saturday Morning

We're supposed to meet at the park & ride at 8:30 to hit the road, but after a drunk night out for Alysson's birthday the night before it would be fair to say we were off to a slow start.  I had the great fortune of riding over to the meeting point with Cathy so I knew that even though I was running late she'd be blamed for it so I was good.  I saw a truck with a picture of a bag of cheeto's on its side while I was driving to Cathy's house and decided I had to have them so we grabbed a bag of the new baked ones and they were AWESOME.  Good hangover food in the absence of a taco bell nearby.

We meet up with everyone and start to head over.  The drinking started around 10am, shortly after we ran into Anna Kournikova (no seriously - Alysson swears it was her) at the rest stop off I90. 

Jen was commenting on the types of people we were seeing driving around us and actually tried to start a word game to pass the time but that's never going to work with Alysson saying "that's the dumbest game ever" every 2 minutes.

Saturday Afternoon

We arrived in Yakima and met up with everyone else to check into the hotel.  Our bus showed up and it was excellent - a nice tour bus - even had a bathroom in the back and seats 24 people so we were perfect with 10 - we had room to spread out.

We stopped by the SubShop to get some rations for the ride and lo and behold it was next door to a pizza hut so Carlos, Julie and I stopped in for some hot grease.  (remember that for later in the "Carlos' shirt" section)

The first winery was Sagleands and that was quite an experience.  There was a real wack job working there who actually asked Jolene - since she was standing there just drinking wine - to please stock a case of wine in the store for her.  Poor Jolene did it and didn't even get a free bottle of wine for it.  I bought about $70 worth of merchandise from their store and they still wouldn't wave my $5 tasting fee which was nuts and the computer broke down as we were in line to pay.  That was a bad experience overall - and our bus driver said we weren't the first to have a lame time there.

Then we went to another place (Bonair) that had an "art room" filled with quilts in all varieties.  I took some pictures you can see here on my space.  Alysson decided to pretend that she was the artist who created the quilts and kept trying to get the patrons to ask her about them but it didn't work out.  There was a big motorcycle sidecar group there so it was really crowded and the wine, despite having won awards (the chardonnay at least), was bad I thought.

Next we went to a place that had really fun, crazy wine names and labels so we were excited about that one but again I didn't like the wine at all so at this point i'm getting a little discouraged.  I mean I don't even have a buzz yet.

Next place is a little shack in someone's driveway - I was guessing it would be equally bad by the looks of it but it was pretty good and I bought a red wine there. 

So finally we're on our way to Apex which is the winery DawnG has been raving about the whole time.  I decide to plug my iPod into the bus' microphone system and lo and behold it actually works so we're all getting in a better mood on the drive over.  I'm trying not to get my expectations up because I'm figuring that it could be just as bad as the others but I was so wrong.  I loved that one!  they had this great art on the walls and the wine was excellent.  I bought 6 bottles of the chardonnay. 

The other interesting thing about Apex is that that's where the wine started to really kick in for everyone so various things started to happen.  For example I loved the Chardonnay there so much that I bought 6 - including one that was already cold so i could open it and drink more of it right then and there.  Amy split it with me but we had no glasses to take with us on the bus so we poured it into our water bottles.  It was a CLASSY move and we caught it on film for your viewing pleasure.

This was also the winery at which I got into a dicussion with Carlos about the stains on his shirt.  He had many - see attached photo.  He explained that they were a combination of many things (wine, pizza) and that I should get off his back.  Later we had a discussion about who had the superior space (mine, naturally) and then I told him that I was going to blog about the weekend and talk about his shirt.  I threatened to get a picture and he swore it would never happen.  So in my tipsy state I contrived a very elementary plan of having someone stand in front of me so he wouldn't see me, and have someone else go talk to him so he would face my direction and I snapped his picture.  It was very clever - i set my camera on Jolene's shoulder.  Which he noticed immediately but didn't understand I was taking his picture.  He later recounted, "I knew something funny was about to happen"... just not to him.  so that was a clear highlight - he was pissed and swears revenge.  we'll see...

Next we went to another winery where I got all of the barrell pictures that I posted here on my blog.  There was this amazing treehouse at the house next door to the winery - and I think as far as "fun" - this was my favorite winery.  I was also the most drunk there which may have contributed to this.  The wine was marginal at best though - I didn't buy anything.

Saturday night

So we head back to the hotel and surprisingly (hardly) there are several people who would rather nap than go to dinner.  So just a few of us (Cathy, Jolene, Amy, Lisa and I) went out to eat.  We had an AWESOME meal at this Italian place downtown.  This in additoin to many more cocktails. By the time we got back to the hotel we were beat and ready for bed.  That's when we ran into DawnG and Carlos who had napped and were ready to go out but we weren't really into it.  We hung out for a little while and headed upstairs where we ended up in our room (Lisa, Jolene and I's room) and watched tv for a while.  At one point Lisa decided to get up and jump around on the bed imitating Tom Cruise's appearance on Oprah and she completely ate shit and ended up flat on her ass with her feet in the air, wedged between the wall and the bed.  I laughed harder than I had in many moons and it was a great end to a fun day.

Sunday

We got up, partook of the continental breakfast at the Courtyard Marriott we were staying in and decided to find some water that we could hang out at for the day.  We got some beer and went down to the river but it was cold and we weren't really into it so we went on to Roslyn which is a fun town and has a bar called the Brick that has a spitoon for all the tobacca chewers.  we ate some pizza across the street, Jen bought some furniture and we headed home.

All in all - good times.

p.s. longest blog ever - go ahead, Carlos...