Weekend Getaway

Now that the weekend is halfway here I figured I'd write about last weekend! Steve & I had a great time getting away for a few days. We decided to go camping!

We left Friday afternoon, got to our campsite, set up our tent and everything else and were just in the middle of grilling up some steaks when we heard the sound of rain. It came VERY quickly....along with lots of lightening and thunder. We rushed back to the car. Luckily we had brought our outback rather than the accord so we put the seats down, ate our half raw steaks and spent the next 2 hours watching the rain come down from the back of our car with a bottle of wine. Fun times!

Once the rain finally stopped we decided that maybe we should just call it a night and scampered back to our tents to spend the rest of the evening trying to sleep enough though it was still raining a bit and we were freezing!

We woke the next morning to none other than the boy scouts......lots of them! Apparently it was the weekend for their camping outing and unfortunately for us they decided to set up camp not too far from where we were camping. After having our yummy percolated coffee and a nutra grain bar we decided it was time to do some hiking.

We hiked up and across pickle creek and down around whistling pines trail. It was a perfect day and a beautiful hike! We had such a great time! Growing up in Montana I spent a lot of time in the outdoors, my californian husband didn't so much though so this was actually his first hike. I decided to mess with him a bit and warned him of all the bears that could be there (even though I don't think there's really any bears in Missouri, that's okay). I tried to scare him but for some reason he didn't buy my whole bear routine.
My best bear impression

After we got back from our hike we had some lunch and decided we'd check out some of the local wineries that were in the area. We cleaned up (as much as you could for camping) and headed off.
I'm a planner....I like to know what I'm doing, where I'm going and for the most part am very organized. Because of that I not only rely on our GPS but many times print off directions from google maps as well...you know, just for a back up.
We decided to start out with the Chaumette Winery. We closely followed our little google map as well as our GPS for about 5 miles down a dirt road. I thought it was kind of odd that a winery would be located down a dirt, but then again I've never been to any of the wineries in St. Genevieve, so I thought maybe they just did things a little differently out there. We came upon a dead end sign and some guys on 4 wheelers who looked a little ticked that we obviously were trespassing on their property. Once we told them we were looking for the winery and got directions from our GPS they simply rolled their eyes and and told us which road to follow.
We headed back and Kelly (that's what we named our GPS, long story, but Steve likes that name and wanted to name our first daughter Kelly, so I figured my best compromise was to let him name the lady that shouts out directions to us in the car Kelly) started recalculating some new directions. We still weren't too far off from the google map either. We drove about 15 minutes and found ourselves on another dirt road. It was beautiful, but it sure did seem like we were in the middle of nowhere! We actually crossed a road that had a creek running over it if that tells you how far out we were.

We were frustrated and finally decided we'd try to just get back to our camp when we stumbled upon a man in a truck. He had that same "your trespassing on my property" look and got our to talk to us. He laughed pretty hard when we told him where we were trying to go. He told us to follow him and got back in his truck. After making lots of turns on dirt roads we ended up at a gate (obviously the entrance to his private property). It was there that we saw the signs for Crown Farms. Apparently the directions we had were right, only the roads had been shut down for over 5 years. He was very nice and told us the best winery that we should be checking out...of course it was none other than the Crown Valley Winery. We were planning on going there second anyway, but figured since we were trespassing on the winery's personal property we might as well just forgo the other places. He gave us directions and off we headed.
Five minutes later we were lost.....again! Apparently our friend figured out we'd be lost and came to find us and told us to follow him once again. Like before, he took us through lots of winding back roads, but it was gorgeous! We actually got our personal tour through the entire winery grounds. As it turns out this nice man owns the crown valley winery and his lived in the area for over 20 years! After driving through rows of grapes we got to our destination! We never got the name of the very nice (and probably very rich) man that helped us out, but we are very grateful for his kindness and have to look back on the situation and laugh now.
We had such a great time at Crown Valley and were glad to give them our business after how nice this man was to us.

I'm not usually one for sweet wines, but the Sweet Redbird they make is probably my new favorite wine! If you go there check it out!

After listening to some good music and enjoying the beautiful country side, we decided it was time to head back and hang out with the boy scouts.
It was a miracle, but we actually easily found our way back to our campsite and it didn't even take driving on any dirt roads!
We made our little campfire and had a nice evening relaxing!