Memorial Day in Arnold

I give this past weekend a B+. Friday night we went to Il Fornio in Burlingame with our good friends Mike and Julie. We had a great time and had some really good food. Saturday Jodi went to her cousins graduation at CSSF. Turns out that Neil Young and his wife were honorary graduates for his work with the Bridgeschool, and he was also a speaker. Jodi got back to San Mateo around 4 and then we headed up to Arnold with Raven and Mona. We made great time, 2.5 hours to be precise. A quick grocery run, picked up a pizza and some growlers at the Snowshoe Brewery and we were set.

Sunday Raven and I got up relatively early and knocked out the drip system. All the water lines and drippers were in pretty good shape so we lucked out. We did some raking and fired up the leaf blower. By 11 am we were done. Afterwards we headed down to Murphys to do some wine tasting. The best part about wine tasting in Gold country is that they don't charge. Ironically, the worst winery there "Ironstone" is the only one that charges. Raven bought some Reef sandals at a surf shop and his white tennies have yet to see the light of day. We didn't get 10 steps out of the store before he put those puppies on and said "this is one of the best purchases I ever made." I concur.

Monday we made it up to Big Trees and hiked throughout the giant redwoods. Those trees are so massive. There were signs of when man first discovered the trees back in the 1800's. Fallen mammoths, giants without there bark, stripped for a spectacle in New York. It kind of dawned on me that when man discovers something great he a) kills it and mounts it, b) captures it and tries to make money off it, c) destroys it, or d) all of the above. I guess we have John Muir to thank for a lot of what we have today in the Sierras.

Highlight of the weekend: Raven's posh bottles of wine and watching Tommy Boy on VHS.