Jesse and Steph's Place

My mom has been bugging me for a while to post some pictures of our apartment. I guess I'm a little late in doing this because she was just here for a visit and has seen it already, but oh well. So here are some pictures. This is our kitchen....not much to say about a kitchen. It's very uninteresting. Although, if you can tell, Jesse and I do not have a microwave. I am proud of this fact because as a student I have become dependable on a microwave for the majority of my eating needs. But it turns out that it is possible to live without one....who would have thought?Now, here is our living room. We do have a gas fireplace which we never use because honestly who needs a fireplace in California. Atop of our mantel is, if you look closely, a picture of Stella. What's interesting about this picture is that whenever Jesse looks at it, he has to pronounce how much he misses her. So it turns out that his previous tough indifference towards her was just a clever facade.
Here is our bedroom. It is very boring and plain except for the beautiful quilt that Lois made us. I'm actually a bit embarassed about our bedroom, but when you sleep on an inflatable bed, what more can you expect?
And the other half of the living room with its permanent fixture... Jesse.
And finally my garden. It's a little smaller than the one I left behind but hopefully it will grow. The plant on the left is the product of our trip to the Living Desert in Palm Springs. The one on the right is the product of the guacamole that I made one night, although its not doing very well.

on the roada from calistoga

We left early Sunday morning to head back to LA. Instead of taking the I-5 like we did on the way up, we drove along the coast for a while on the Pacific Coast Highway. This meant driving through San Francisco. We didn't get out of the car so unfortunately all of the pictures were taken either through the window or the sun roof. At least we got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge...

...and past alcatraz.

Our trip along the coast brought us to a little town called Carmel by the Sea. We stopped here for a bit to see the beach. Let me just point out that the weather was beautiful and it was December 3rd.

I should also point out that despite the great weather, Ed was still wearing socks with his sandals.





If you look closely at this next picture you can see that the same woman is in it three times. The reason for this being that when I was taking the 6 pictures that make up this one, she was walking in front of me and thus kept getting in the shot.We did not stay on the coast for very long because due to the winding roads and stoplights, the drive was slow. So after Carmel we headed east back to the I-5. Our point of return just so happened to be at the location of Harris Ranch which is the giant feed lot pictured below. As you can imagine, given the 70,000 or so cows hanging out right next to the highway, the air was very fragrant. Most people would likely plug their nose and drive quickly past. But not my Jesse. He rolled down the window, took a deep breath and said, "mmmm, smell that manure." He's one in a million!
Just south of the actual ranch was the Inn and Restaurant of the same name. We stopped there for supper to get a taste of the beef, and it was good.

geisers, wine tasting and tractors

For our first outing in the wine region (since most of the vineyards did not open until 10am) we headed out to see Old Faithful which was about 5 minutes from our hotel in Calistoga. When we got there we were told that the geiser would be erupting in a few minutes. I guess in geiser talk, a few mintues means half an hour, but none the less we got to see the wonderful sight of a big stream of water shooting out of the earth. I personally enjoyed when all of the people other than the smart ones (the Waglers and Cressmans) got wet by the spray and fled for cover. We were wise enough to notice where the ground was wet from the last display and obviously stood where it wasn't.


Visiting a wonder of nature always makes me want to see some goats as well. Just my luck, this place also had some random goats. So, much to Jesse's dismay because he thought they smelled, I paid a quarter and fed them, and then rubbed my hands in his face.

A little more interesting than the run of the mill goats which really had nothing to do with geisers, there was a little pen with fainting goats. Supposedly when startled, these goats stiffen up and fall over. Now I'm sure if this were my dad's blog he would have said something along the lines of, "well they must be broken because they didn't faint when they saw mom." But I am not going to make that comment. I will say that I did try startling the goats and nothing happened. I also paid another quarter and fed these goats as well, and again I rubbed my hands in Jesse's face.

Our first wine stop was at a winery that I don't remember the name of. Maybe my parents will look on the bottle of wine that they bought and let me know. We didn't stay long, just tasted a bit of wine and that was it. The views of the surrounding vineyard were much more interesting.







The next stop on our journey was the Grove Street Winery which was located in Healdsburg. We chose this winery because in our free winery tour book it said that the tastings were free. This winery was a little different from the last. It was pretty much just a big warehouse within the town. The guy running it was very nice though and there were snacks offered along with the wine.

Lucky for us, well lucky for Ed, we came to the area on the weekend of the Olive Festival so next on our list of things to do was to visit an Olive press that was having an open house. We were a little disappointed about the open house. The tour was just a chance to look through a window at the press, and the rest was pretty much a way to get us to buy the expensive olive oil. I think there were tastings but we passed.


After the Olive Press we headed back to Calistoga. We took a really cool winding road through the hills that separated the two valleys. Upon seeing this sign Ed just didn't understand why the roads would be "icky".

This was a statue that we saw in front of a little restaurant on our travels.

Our final stop for the day was a visit to Mumm Napa Vineyards. The place was a little fancy for our likings and the tasting was expensive so we just looked around.



Back in Calistoga the annual Christmas Tractor parade was happening that night. So of course we had to stand out and watch. Sorry about the quality of the pictures, I haven't figured out how to take shots of christmas lights in the dark that are on tractors that are moving. Maybe next time.

on the roada to Calistoga

For the weekend we drove north to Napa Valley to see what the wine region had to offer. Jesse enjoyed the chance to drive north because this meant that we would be seeing farmland along the way. Below is a picture of what happens when Jesse sees a tractor while driving. Luckily it wasn't a really good, interesting tractor because sometimes this results in him swerving.
We stopped at a rest stop for a picnic which consisted of sandwiches made from the leftovers from a previous night out. We had gone to a restaurant called the Wood Ranch. It was the same one that we had been to with Mandy and Kyle only 4 days earlier. Jesse had been so excited about meat cooked over a wood fire that my parents had to try it out too.
After seeing fields and fields of almonds along the way, we had to stop at a little stand to try the fruits of the land.
This picture was taken at Jesse's request so I don't have anything to say about it.
When we finally got to the Napa area (there was a lot of traffic through the San Fransisco region) we ended our trip in a town called Calistoga. We stayed at the Roman Inn and Spa. What was appealing about his hotel was that the water in the pool was supplied by a hot spring making it very warm. It was great to swim outside even though it was a little cold, hense the mist which made some of the pictures blurry.