Design Wall Monday 05/16/16

Sorry for the absence last week - we had been on a mini vacation that week and I didn't get any sewing done!  We love to drive down to Paso Robles and go wine (and beer) tasting.  Now that we live in San Jose, it is only about a 2 1/2 hour drive from home.  Above is a pic of me at the vineyard where we stayed for two nights, Croad Vineyards.  Absolutely wonderful place and great wine too. The winemaker, Martin Croad, was around and we had some wonderful chats.

Because we were gone on Mother's Day weekend, my mom, sister and I moved our annual Mother's Day sewing day to this past weekend.  A good time was had by all, as usual.  I got quite a bit of cutting and marking done, so I literally have my work cut out for me now!  I can just sit and sew tonight which is wonderful. I'm really pleased with how much I got done.  I usually talk so much I don't get anything accomplished!  Above is my sister showing her Swoon block that she made yesterday.  Turned out so great!  Both of those prints have a little metallic touch to them, which you can't see in this picture.

Be sure to check out Judy L's blog to see what everyone is working on today. Also linking up with Quilt Story and Let's Bee Social later this week.

Vacation Day 6 & 7

So we are heading out today. Sad to leave our nice digs! I thought I'd post a picture of our favorite wireless internet spot, the Bean Scene. It's a nice little coffee shop here in St. George. They make the best iced mochas and some really good breakfast food, too. The people have been very friendly here (actually, everyone we've met on our trip has been very friendly). I've got pictures of the place we stayed as well as the quilt shops I visited, but I'll get those posted after I get home. Our flight out of Las Vegas leaves around 6:00 tonight, so we'll be beat by the time we get home. The question now is, will Bear be chew us out, or give us the cold shoulder... Thanks to Steve for watching over him for us!

View and Rental

Below is a view from one of our patios! The golf course runs outside of the casitas and we have a nice view of the mountains.



Lance took a picture of our rental car. I think we should have gotten an upgrade... :)

Vacation Day 4

Yesterday we drove through Zion National Park on our way up to Bryce Canyon National Park. We’ll spend a little more time at Zion today, but we wanted to get to Bryce because it is farther away from where we are staying. We ended up getting a later start than we intended, and didn’t get to see as much as we wanted. The pictures don’t show just how RED all of the mountains are. The formations are just amazing. We took tons of pictures, of course, but I’ll just post a few here. I’ll try for a slide show when we get back home.





Along the way we saw some buffalo outside of a restaurant serving buffalo burgers. We did not partake, but instead took some pictures for posterity.


Still posting from the coffee shop. I'm not happy about this situation, but the rest of the vacation is going great, so I can't complain too much...

Vacation Day 3

Just a quick post - sorry, no picture. We are having a tremendous amount of trouble getting internet access. Constant trouble where we are staying, and a bit of trouble at the coffee shop, too. There is outdoor musical theater during the summer at a high school for the preforming arts located about 5 minutes from where we are staying. Last night we saw Sound of Music and it was wonderful! They utilized the red rock mountain behind them in the staging and it all worked out very nicely. Well, we're off to a late start on our trip to Bryce Canyon today. This is the farthest. Tomorrow we are planning on Zion, which is closer. Hopefully we'll have better luck with the internet tomorrow!

Vacation Day 2

On Sunday we made our drive from Las Vegas to St. George, Utah. We ended up driving through the very corner of Arizona, and my plan was to take pix of the state signs. I got a great one of Arizona's, but we flew by the Utah sign and there was no way to turn around for miles. Oh well... It was a desert drive with a lot of this:

We ran around and did a lot of Geocaching -- we found six on one day (four in that tiny bit of Ariziona and two in Utah). However, searching around the desert in 100+ heat was totally exhausting! In and out of the car and slowly searching around was brutal. Lance and I grabbed a couple of pix.

The place where we are staying is absolutely gorgeous. I'll post pix of those next time...

Vacation Day 1

Well we've been without internet access for a couple of days. I even missed my own Blogoversary which was yesterday! We are having trouble logging in from our where we are staying now, as well. Right now I am posting from a coffee shop in St. George... We flew out of SFO on Virgin America. The flight was great. They have a tv in the back of the seat in front of you and you can watch tv or listen to music or even play video games. I'm not the best flyer, and this made the time just fly by. We got into the Las Vegas airport and got our car, which is a Ford Mirage -- a small SUV. Lance is a Hertz gold member, so they had given us a free upgrade! The heat hit us with a blast when we walked out of the airport. It looks like 100+ degress for us the whole time we are here. A short drive over to the Orleans Hotel and we were on our way. We were surprised to find that they do not offer free WiFi service, and since we were pretty busy so we didn't bother logging in. After a few beers and video black jack (Lance won the $10 that I lost), we headed over to the show. We saw the Steve Miller band with Joe Cocker opening. What a great show. Amazing how everyone is aging. I imagine both artist must be in their 60's by now... Most of the crowd was about the same, but I was surprised to see quite a few younger people. I guess good music spans generations.

Vacation Days 5 & 6

Last days of vacation. So sad. We ended up in Ashland, Oregon -- one of my favorite places in the world. Unfortunately, it was unusally HOT there -- well over 100 degrees! That's hotter than it got in Redwood City all summer. The heat was annoying, but Lance had read that it was going to rain. I really didn't think it would happen... We saw two plays: Tartuffe by Moliere and As You Like It by Shakespeare. We saw Tartuffe the evening we got there and it was wonderful. Very well done. The next day we saw a matinee of As You Like It. Just after the intermission as we were watching the play, I could hear a sound getting louder and louder. I finally figured out that it was raining, and we could hear it inside the theater. Then the power went out but only for a moment. I'm guessing they had a generator or something because the lights went back on, but only house lights -- the stage was still dark. The show must go on as they say, and that it did. They continued on through to the end that way and just as they were taking their final bow, the lights came back on. Oh well. They did an admirable job - true professionals. It was very well done as well. It was the original words, but set in Depression era '30s. However, I am finding many of his comedies to be very similar to each other. I felt as if I had seen much of this play before and better (Shakespeare's fault, not the production...) but that's just my opinion.

Here are a couple of pictures of downtown Ashland. Unfortunately, we did not take many.



Below are pictures of the duck pond at Lithia Park which is right next to the Shakespeare festival stages. I didn't realize until this trip just how big the park was. We attempted to find a geocache in this park but got caught in the rain. We made our wet way over to a restaurant before the rain started in too heavily and while we were inside it started to pour down with hail!
The day we left we tried to find the cache again and got very close, but it was right by this duck pond and there were just too many people around to make the grab. Oh well. At least we got to see these ducks. There were at least 100 ducks there.




And then finally another shot of Mt. Shasta on our way home. Another great road trip! Can't wait for the next one...

Vacation Days 3 & 4

I know this is being published a bit late, but we were without Internet access for a couple of days when we were at the Oregon Caves Chateau, and then by the time we got to Ashland, we were exhausted from heat and travel.

Day 3 we were leaving Grant’s Pass on our way to the Oregon Caves. Our big adventure for this day was to take a Hellgate Excursion on the Rouge River. I totally recommend this activity to everyone! It is a large jet boat that holds a couple dozen or so people and rides along the top of the water. Depending on the time of year, you go quite a distance down the river. The boat travels quite fast at top speed, but they idle through areas as necessary. There are lots of birds and animals along the ride that are pointed out by the boat’s pilot. Close to the turnaround point, there is a large restaurant built by the company who runs the boats. You disembark for a really wonderful lunch of salad, bbq chicken, potatoes and dessert, all while sitting on covered outdoor terraces with a view of the river. So wonderful!! Arguably the best part of the boat trip was their famous 360 spins where you get pretty darn wet. Just like a theme park ride. I had a really great time there and would do it again in a heartbeat. They have the lunch ride that we took and also dinner rides (which were sold out when we went) and also a Sunday brunch ride.




On our trip two years ago, we made our way across Southern Oregon, we took the tour of the caves, but didn’t realize that there was lodging there (the Oregon Caves Chateau). This time around, we thought it would be interesting to stay there for a couple of days. It is touted as being very quiet and tranquil, with no TV or phone in the room. Great! However, we found that being such an old building, the floors creaked and the walls were thin. Every footstep and voice could be heard. We could even hear the person upstairs snoring. That was fine until about 8 am when they started tearing the roof off of the building. We were not told that they were starting a very big renovation project on our very night there. Oh well, such is life. We took some trips out to the local wineries for more wine tasting. We also attempted to do some Geocaching, but did not fare well. We found our only cache of the trip along the winding road to the caves in a mile marker. Oh well, we got one at least!

That’s it for now. I’ll blog about Ashland next time!

Day 2 pictures

Can you guess which one is my favorite??

O Blogger

Oh, Blogger, why are you being fickle??? I have pictures to post, but Blogger is not cooperating. I'll try again soon. We did mostly wine tasting today. There is a quilt shop very close to where we are staying here in Grant's Pass, called the Purple Pincushion, but alas, they are closed on Sundays and we won't have time to stop on Monday before we leave town. We hit several wineries and kicked around historic Jacksonville for a bit. There was a quilt shop there called Country Quilts. They had a room that had stacks upon stacks (literally hundreds) of hand made quilts for sale. They gave me a free fat quarter because I was a fellow quilter! Very nice people there.

We are off early tomorrow for a power boat ride on the Rouge River and then over to the Oregon Caves for a couple of days. I don't think there is Internet access there, so it may be a couple of days before I am able to post again. I'll give you all an update when I get to Ashland!

Vacation Day 1

Well we made it to Oregon! We left a bit later than we intended, and we got to our hotel at about 8:00 tonight. We only stopped once in Redding for a short break. Unfortunately, Lance has a cold, but we are carrying on anyway. I snapped this shot of Mt. Shasta from the car window as we drove.

Tomorrow we're off for some wine tasting and maybe some geocaching. Watch for another update!