Day 9 - April 4 Going to the Wineries & Signage

Wineries and Signage

April 4, 2005

We woke up early today and found that we were very sore from yesterday’s “the Mighty Hike” so today we decided to take it easy by going to some wineries. Wineries in Colorado, yes I could not believe it myself but I knew it to be true. And the wines are actually quite good with some making ports and cabernet sauvignons as good as California or Spain. But first we had to do some other things first, before we went to the wineries.

First - we slept in - actually again we slept like the dead, if nothing else on this trip, I learned that the more we exercise, the better I sleep. We woke up and had breakfast and put in a couple of pictures and the log from yesterday, as our fans are waiting, after all. Then we decided who to call for getting signage for our camper. What this means is we want people to know of our excellent adventure - so we want to put on our camper - Laura & Sasha’s Excellent Adventure - www.Laura-N-Sasha.com on our camper. So we went to Angel Signs and asked for someone to come out to us to put the lettering on. So on April 6th they will come out and do that for us.

We then went to Burger King. Sasha wanted to treat me to Italian food, but I wanted to check out the wineries so I said, “NO give me fast food and get me to the wine!” Maybe I was little forceful, but it was already 2 pm and most of the wineries close at 5 pm and we had to find them. All in all, we went to 6 wineries in Grand Junction and the town of Palisade - let me tell you, there are very nice wineries here.

The first winery that we went to was not on the Grand Junction map (the link is a PDF of a similar map we had, in case you want to look at it as we go from winery to winery), as it was so new, Graystone Winery. But the woman was so nice, and it was a neat winery, she had crystal glasses in cases as well as for tasting the wines. She had a White port, which is very unusual and tasted so fine, we had to get it.

- Sidebar - Actually looking at this map, it is better than the one we had, but as I do not have a printer here, we could not use it. Maybe I will get a portable printer in the next couple of months so that I can print out these things on the road. Now that would make me a true mobile woman. - End Sidebar -

Port usually is red but they did not use the skins within the fermenting process, so it is more of a pink color.

From Graystone Winery, I wanted Sasha to try mead, a sugar-honey brew and so we stopped at Rocky Mountain Meadery. They had over 12 different alcoholic substances to try, so by the sixth or seventh, Sasha was feeling woozy, I think. We got a mead bottle to bring home. And we took pictures starting with the Meadery.

Then we went to Plum Creek Winery which was across the street. They had a tasting room in Denver area but the vines were here in Palisade so they decided to make a tasting room area here. It was a beautiful tasting room with high ceilings and a gas fireplace. We tasted their wines and got a bottle. It was funny; she had a metal rooster sculpture outside, so we took a picture of that.

We seem to buy at each winery, I guess my feeling is, we taste the wines, and I feel we should buy something, so we do. I don’t want to think of it as feeling guilty about drinking and not buying, but maybe that is what it is.

We went up the road a bit more and came to the Grande River Winery and they had a few wines there - but by now Sasha was tuckered out from drinking, so I kind of did it on my own. They had a beautiful place and we took a picture or two and then we got on the highway to get to Canyon Wind winery. We got a little lost on the way; there is no exit 44 going east, only going west, which we did not realize until we went past to exit 49 or so.

A little note about Canyon Wind wines - we had their 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon when we went to The Winery Restaurant and had it with lamb and steak. When we got to the winery, I wanted to make sure to try that wine again and so we did. We also tried their other three wines they had available (their port was sold out) and I bought 2 bottles of that Cab because it was so good. We took a picture outside near their vines and then headed back towards Grand Junction and Fruita to get to Two Rivers Winery and to check out Route 340.

This route is quite nice, Sasha had gone along it without me the other day to check out the next trailhead (for April 5th) and he stated that there were also some large and beautiful houses on that route.

We got a little lost again heading back, because I wanted to take Route 6 to Route 70 and then to Route 340, but on Route 6 we headed the wrong way and ended up seeing some elk. These elk were penned up but we thought, well, we probably are not going to see them in nature, they would hide from us most definitely so we decided to take pictures. The first picture taken was under a little duress, as there was a 18 wheeler coming down this dead-end road toward us. So I took the picture and we started to move down the street and he was still coming! Finally he pulled over and we were able to head back to the elk. We got them to come over to the fence so that we could take close ups. The one elk was doing something weird with its head, kind of showing off it seemed so we took a bunch of pictures. We only put two in the website to show you, but we took a bunch. Like we had never seen deer before…us suburbanites!

I called ahead to make sure that the winery was open until 6 pm (they were) and so we headed off. Route 340 went through the back end of Grand Junction and is closest to the Colorado National Monument, so they can look out their windows and see all. This winery is very close to where we are staying, I was very happy to try their wines. They only had a few to try, but their tasting room had high ceilings and chandeliers made from elk antlers. Very cool. We bought a wine there and then headed home for dinner of leftovers and cheese and pretzels (instead of crackers as we had none.) Happy and woozy, we went to bed.