Victoria & Halloween

Our friend Victoria was in Seattle visiting us this past weekend; although she wasn't here very long we had a fun time showing her around for a couple of gorgeous fall days. She's going to send us some of the many photos she took; I'll put up a link as soon as they are available.

In the meantime, here are a few pics from Saturday. We went to a Seattle Symphony concert (hence the dressy clothes) and then went out to a couple nightclubs to celebrate Halloween. Victoria was a cat and Anya and I were autumn trees. The creativity was all thanks to Anya; I claim no credit.

Pumpkin Carving

Last weekend our friends Alex and Crystal threw a pumpkin-carving party; we took a few photos.

I hadn't carved a pumpkin in many years, and actually Anya and our friend Pavel had never carved one. I think that was the impetus for throwing the party; it's just one of those things you should probably try at least once.

It was pretty much like I remembered it: gooey. The whole exercise was a little like taking a trip down memory lane back to 4th grade, except we had wine instead of Kool-Aid and salmon instead of Fruit Roll-Ups.

Cave B Estate Winery

When most people think of "Washington," with its temperate, moist climate and bountiful water and trees, they're actually thinking of Western Washington. But the strip of land between the ocean and the Cascade Mountains that typifies the "Pacific Northwest" is only part of the story.

If you cross the Cascades, as we did on Saturday, you get to a completely different environment. Eastern Washington, which makes up a majority of the state's land and a minority of the state's population, is very different from Seattle. This is a vast, dry land of rolling brown hills, canyons, and tumbleweed; arid except for pockets of irrigation.

Heading east out of Seattle on I-90 you go through the mountains and, descending, enter a desert landscape which could easily be mistaken for Arizona or New Mexico. You reach the Columbia River, which has used its Cascade and British Columbia meltwater to carve a huge gorge. After crossing the Columbia, you reach what might be your destination: wine country.

Cave B Estate Winery is a fairly well-publicized place: it has a spectacular setting, a reputation for fantastic food, and its 2.25 hour drive from Seattle makes it one of the closest wineries in the up-and-coming Columbia Valley winemaking region. We chose Saturday to visit because they were having a Harvest Festival. We could watch as the freshly picked grapes were de-stemmed and put into the fermentation tank. There was freshly squeezed apple cider (from apples grown on the estate), hay rides for the kids, and a grape-stomping competition. And of course there was plenty of wine and great food.

While Columbia Valley wine doesn't yet have the worldwide renown of regions like Napa or Sonoma, visiting Cave B was in many ways better than our experience in California. Great scenery aside, Cave B was far more peaceful: none of the bumper-to-bumper traffic or tourist busses. There is a small inn on the property that we're thinking would make a great weekend getaway, especially since Eastern Washington is far sunnier (although much colder) than Seattle during the winter.

We took a lot of great pictures, see them here.

MN Trip

Anya and I both had a fun time visiting everyone in Minnesota this past weekend. It was unseasonably hot and sticky; we were disappointed not to see any October snow.

We didn't do a good job of taking very many pictures. What we have is from my family's traditional fall get-together: the fish fry. My Grandpa loves to go fishing and every fall he fries some beer-battered walleye for us to enjoy. It was a beautiful (if warm) day at my uncle's farm near Pine Island, MN. Some cute pics, many of my 7 year-old cousin Nicole, are available here.

For those of you that we didn't get to see on this short trip, we'll try to catch up with you at Christmas time.