Beautiful Napa

Beautiful Napa, California

Beautiful scenery combined with a relaxing visit with friends: a perfect vacation!
If there is just too much California history for you, just look at the photos...Napa is a feast for the eyes.
It took a lot of planning to schedule/ calendar our three wonderful days together as college friends. We call ourselves "the Originals"...I guess everyone is original (maybe that term could be open to interpretation??), but we are the small group of Whitman College girlfriends, class of 1965, who have tried to get together about once a year. Soon the larger group that blossomed from our small group will have a reunion, too. We mostly talked, ate, and visited museums, shops, vineyards and other places of interest in and around St. Helena, where we stayed at the home of Kathleen, in the Napa Wine Country, which is gorgeous! It is inland, about one hour north of San Francisco, where hot days and cool nights and various composition soils make it one of the best wine regions in the world.

As we stopped to pose in front of a famous sign, my cousin Nancy who lives in Napa, just happened at that very moment to also arrive, as she was showing around some tourists; so she took our photo. Was that a coincidence?? I was pretty surprised to hear her call my name as I was admiring the vineyards on the other side of the road. The vineyards, redwoods, olive orchards are so green against the golden California hills. It was a hot day!

 That first evening Kathleen, as president of Rotary service organization, gave a short talk urging people to support scholarships for needy pre-schoolers at a fundraising dinner, provided by local Clif family (who have expanded their  famous Clif bar business to include other food products) food truck.

The purple grapes are ready for crushing (with machines not bare feet these days). Most of the many many wineries are in beautiful stone buildings, many dating from the 1800's. There are also lots of olive trees and beautiful homes throughout the Napa Valley.

There are many large, gorgeous estates of the ambitious men and women from Mexican California (which became independent from Mexico and the 31st U.S. state in 1850), eastern U.S., and Europe whose stories we learned about at the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum and the Museum of 1881. 

(1850, Scotland- 1894, Samoa)
His stories and poems are known
and loved by American children.

We loved the new 1881 historical museum in Oakville, housed in an old Victorian house across the street from the old Oakville station. 

Among the best loved of all was fur-trapper George Yount who arrived in California from Missouri in 1831, who became the first American to settle and plant grapes in the Napa Valley. He had a repeated and very vivid dream of people trapped in the snow. When he told the impression to someone he learned of people trapped in Carson Pass, and was able to rescue the survivors of the ill-fated Donner party in 1846-7. As a child in Los Altos, CA, I had friends who were Donner descendants (thanks to Yount!)

"Sam Brannan was the most exciting man in Gold Rush California": newspaperman, Mormon, leader, brought 236 people to California on his ship "Brooklyn",

founder of 1862  "Calistoga" (his hot spring resort which was the Saratoga Spring of California), founder of Napa Valley Railroad.
Next door is the oldest continuous grocery store in California, from 1881,which has a little of everything... I found cutting boards made in our family wood-working factory in Vermont!



We also enjoyed the farmer's market, where I loved talking to a lovely woman, Princess Aisha from rural city of Tamale, capital of the northern region of Ghana, about her non profit organization to build a vocational school for impoverished girls. She raises money by selling shea butter, soap and African arts and crafts. I felt a particular affinity with her, as I have 2 sisters from Ghana currently
 living with me.  




Ann bought a few things for grandsons from a colorful vendor!



We visited the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) which houses school, kitchens, dining room/restaurant, exhibits, and gardens.
I really enjoyed the Julia and Paul Childs photo exhibit which told the story of their interesting, colorful, happy life together mostly in  Paris: his wonderful photography and her cooking. Here are a few samples:









Miriam, Kathie, Wendy, Ann, Kathleen at CIA
We loved the huge fork made of forks!

Ann and I had a nice walk through the oak and redwood groves to a thermal resort called White Sulphur Springs, originally a destination for the wealthy of San Francisco. Now a venue for seminars, etc. The area is so peaceful and a Garden of Eden!

and so many beautiful homes along the way...

and we did eat chocolate! (in a more refined form!)

It was a sad farewell for awhile, but we took away happy memories of a few fun days together, begun 58 years ago! Our bodies may not work as well now, but we have lots to talk about, even if it takes us awhile to remember names, etc.: family, books, teachers, classmates, adventures, ideas, disappointments, careers, hopes and dreams. 

we ate lots of fruit, salad, and then more chocolate!