Ahh, Spring!

It's a rainy gray spring morning here in Ashburn, so I thought I'd take a moment to catch you up on what we've been up to (at least for those of you who REFUSE to join Facebook ;-) ).

It was the week of Spring Break for our kids. Last weekend, mother nature teased us with some really gorgeous weather. We bought some new bicycles at Spokes Etc. We figured it was about time - my wife and I have each had our bicycles for over 10 years now and they've gotten pretty beat up. Plus, I figured it's an incentive to get ES interested in learning to ride a bike without training wheels. We spent some time practicing last weekend while the weather was nice.

I also decided to start up the MGB for the first time this year and took turns giving the boys a ride around town.

ES and I going for a ride in my Limited Edition 1979 MGB

I inherited a love of MGs from my Dad. We frequently had one MG model or another as I was growing up. They are by NO means reliable cars, but they're fun to drive and the engine is simple enough that even I can work on it by myself. I was rather surprised that the MG started up on the first try and ran like a champ during our spin around Ashburn. Part of that is thanks to this awesome battery charger thing that I keep it plugged in over the winter.

Battery Charger

ES took the camera with him on his ride with me.

Spring Break Road Trip

We went for a two day road trip across Virginia. Although it wasn't intentional, our timing seemed to be perfect for avoiding the crowds. For anyone else in the DC area looking for a local getaway, I highly recommend following the path we took:

Day 1:

Left home about 9 a.m. and drove down to Luray Caverns. Got there about 11 a.m. and spent a little over an hour in the caverns.

The pictures on the Luray Caverns website don't give you an idea for the vast size of the caverns, so I tried to take these pictures with my family in them to show the relative size of things.

This is Dream Lake. At first, it seems like stalactites above and stalagmites below, but you'll notice it's a perfect mirror image above and below. Yes, that's water on the bottom giving a perfectly crisp and clear reflection of the stalactites above.

When we arrived, there was no line and we walked right in. No crowds at all. When we left, a lot more people had arrived and there was a line waiting to buy tickets.

We ate lunch at the little cafe at the caverns - big mistake. Do yourselves a favor and pack a lunch or go somewhere else.

After lunch we went through the Car and Carriage Museum right next to the caverns (admission to the caverns gets you into the museum, too). That was really cool - I highly recommend it.

Blunoz Self Portrait in the Car and Carriage Museum

They had about three dozen really nicely restored antique cars.
All of them were pre-WWII vintage.

RR... what more can I say?

Then we drove on down to Charlottesville, VA, had a really good Mexican dinner and spent the night in a hotel.

Day 2:

We got up and went to see Monticello first thing in the morning after breakfast in the hotel. Again, when we got there we waltzed right in - parked in the front row, no lines, no waits, bought our tickets, got on the shuttle bus, and rode directly up to the house. When we left at lunch time, there were crowds of people around the visitors center and lines of people waiting and the parking lot was full. I was glad we went first thing in the morning instead of driving down to Monticello from the DC area like everybody else had.

Panorama Family Photo on the west lawn of Monticello.

View south from the west lawn.

Blunoz Self Portrait on the northwest side of Monticello.

YB enjoys a quiet moment while the adults learn
about the boring vegetable garden nearby.

Happy YB enjoying a piggy-back ride from Grandpa.

ES checks out Thomas Jefferson's gravesite.

Collage of Monticello Spring Flowers

Living in Hawaii sure gave me an appreciation for flowers. The spring flowers at Monticello were wonderful, and I took a LOT of pictures. My wife accused me of being a "girl" for taking so many pictures of flowers.

We stopped to do some wine tasting on the way home and had some dinner at the Blue Ridge Grill in Brambleton. Multiple friends of ours have raved about how good the Blue Ridge Grill is, and we weren't disappointed. Great food and service with reasonable prices.

Wine tasting at Prince Michel vinyards.

Grandma played chess with the boys while
LW, Grandpa, and I enjoyed the wine tasting.

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend and get some time off to enjoy the season.

Happy Easter!

(J&J - there are more pictures, but you'll have to join Facebook if you want to see them ;-) ).

NoVA Heads Up! Loudoun County Fall Farm Tour

For those of you in the Northern Virginia area, mark your calendars. Next weekend (Oct 18 & 19) is the Loudoun County Farm Color Tour.

I mentioned before that there is a fall and a spring farm tour in Loudoun County where the farms (and vineyards) open their doors for visitors to see the animals, taste the wine, buy their fresh produce and crafts. It's a wonderful event that we have enjoyed doing a few times. [Aside: I think the last time we got to do it, Loping Squid was with actually with us, wasn't he?]

Anyway, if you go to the website above, you can see a list of the farms that are open, get a brochure, look at an interactive map through Google Maps, etc.

One place I DON'T see on the list this year that has always been one of our favorites is the Chile Man. He's one of the farther-out stops on the tour, but it's worth it. He runs a very large sort of greenhouse with all sorts of herbs and chile peppers for sale. He also makes and bottles his own salsa, sauces, and marinades. Usually, during the farm tour, he has a large table set up with samples of all his delicious stuff and bowls of tortilla chips to dip it in. We love his salsas and marinades and always leave with several bottles.

Chile Man Samples during Spring Farm Tour 2006

Since we've been away for a year, I fear the worst - like maybe his business went under. His website is still up, but the calendar of events on his website says 2005, and an email I sent to his website address got rejected. I'll try calling during business hours and see if there's a response.

Travel Log: Sisters, OR

In case you haven't already figured out, my blog posts for the next couple of weeks are going to be about our trip across country. It may not be anything terribly interesting other than to keep family and friends up to date on our progress as we work our way across America and the sights we see along the way.

After a brief stop in Portland, OR, we drove down to Sisters, OR for my step-brother's wedding on Saturday.

The scenery along the way was spectacular.

Mt. Hood

We stopped in Madras, OR and had some awesome burgers at this place...

I really liked their black and yellow sign out front.

The name of the milkshake flavor had me wondering if I'm going to pop-positive for cocaine on my next urinalysis. It was a darn good shake though. (It actually tasted sort of like blueberry.)

We got checked into our two rental houses at the Black Butte Ranch and had a wonderful family dinner last night.

Grandpa continued to enjoy MFA (Most Favored Adult) status.

Grandpa teaching YB to use a knife.

I also got to indulge in a bottle of my favorite wine...

Stag's Leap

This morning, the boys were really excited by the four deer on our back porch looking for breakfast handouts.

ES took this photo with his camera while standing at the edge of the deck. The deer came right up to the deck and ate out of Grandma's hand.


I took my dad and aunt out to find a geocache today. This one was a perfect example of why I love geocaching. It takes me to places I never would have gone to if it weren't for the geocache placed there.

I was panning across the map of nearby geocaches, and I saw this listing with "observatory" in the title, and saw that it was an Earth Cache (geology related, approved by the Geological Society of America). The description made it sound like a pretty good panoramic view of the area, and it was "only" 22 miles away, so I figured we'd give it a shot.

It felt like we were driving around the Big Island (Hawaii) because we were on these narrow roads winding through miles upon miles of barren volcanic wasteland. The geocache was at an "observatory", but not the type of observatory you would normally expect. This was just a spectacular view point to see several mountains in all directions.

The Observatory

Inside the "observatory" were a series of viewing windows. Each was carefully constructed to limit your view to a single mountain peak, and each window was labeled with what peak you were looking at and how far away it was.

Windows for Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood

Mt. Jefferson View through the Left Window Above

More Windows

Mt. Washington through Right Window Above

If you continue on up the volcanic rock steps around the outside of the observatory...

The Steps

...on top of the structure you find this compass rose with pointers to each of the peaks in view.

View on top of the Observatory looking North
(Mt. Washington on left and
Mt. Jefferson in distance just right of center)

View on top of the Observatory looking South
(Three Sisters)

If you'd like to see a different view of the volcanic wasteland we were in, click here, then zoom out a few times. I wanted to copy and paste the image from Google Maps, but their Terms of Use prohibit any form of copying. Hopefully the link will work to take you there.

We had to high-tail it out of there. This geocache was 22 miles as the Google Maps drives, but I didn't anticipate the narrow, winding, switch-back roads at 20-30 mph, so we had to boogie to get back in time for the wedding rehearsal at Black Butte Ranch.

My wonderful wife got me an awesome new camera for my upcoming birthday, and it takes panorama photos. I tested out the panorama photo feature during the wedding rehearsal.

A different view of the 3 Sisters.
(That's the wedding party in front of the trees)

We had an awesome rehearsal dinner and really enjoyed the food and the company there.

As for now, it's time to hit the rack.

Loudoun County Vineyards

We frequently sit out on our front porch or across the street on our neighbors' front porch to have a glass of wine or some other beverage-du-jour. Since one of our neighbors across the street is moving to Northern Virginia next week, we thought we should introduce her to some Virginia wine.

One of the things we enjoyed doing twice a year in the DC suburbs was the Loudoun County Farm Tour in the fall and the spring. From the website you can download a map that will show you all the farms and vineyards that open their doors to the public for the day during the farm tour.

We weren't really aware of all the vineyards in Loudoun County until we did the "farm" tour. In hindsight, I would use the farm tour to visit the farms that aren't normally open. There's a lot to see on the tour, and you'd be crazy to try and do it ALL in one day. The vineyards all have tasting rooms that are open throughout the year. You can download the Loudoun County Wine Trail map or use the interactive version on their website and go tour the countryside and try the wines separate of visiting the farms.

So anyway, getting back to the reason why all this came to mind in the first place... We have a small collection of wines from Loudoun County as a result of doing the farm tour. Tonight we opened up a bottle of Tarara red table wine. It was EXCELLENT!

We didn't even realize the bottle was
blue until after we poured the wine.
Pretty, isn't it?

Out of all the vineyards in Loudoun County, I think Tarara is probably the nicest, most expansive with many beautiful picnic areas and facilities to support big catered functions like weddings.

Grandpa, me, and the boys look for a geocache
on the Tarara Vineyard. (April 2007)

The man-made cave they have for wine
storage is pretty neat to see, too.

If you asked me to pick the top three vineyards to visit out of all the vineyards listed on the Loudoun County Wine Tour, I would recommend:

1) Tarara (see above)

2) Loudoun Valley Vineyards - Their pear desert wine is legendary and we buy a few bottles every time we go there. They offer a nice Mother's Day or Father's Day brunch there in a very pretty setting.

LW and our friend LS wine-tasting at LV Vineyards.
May 2006

3) Hillsborough - This one is a hit with the boys because they have a small pond with frogs going "ribbit!" The scenery is pretty, too.