Happy Friday friends! Since the weekend is almost here, I thought that today I'd talk about one of my favorite weekend activities: wine tasting. Besides just loving to try new wines and compare and contrast different varietals and vintages, I enjoy visiting wineries because I like to hear firsthand the stories behind the wineries and their products. There tends to be so much passion put into winemaking, and I love hearing about it. I also am in love with the beauty that typically surrounds wine country. This love affair first started when I studied abroad in Italy in college, met a local restaurant owner who offered to take two of my friends and me on a winery tour, and spent a day in the Italian countryside sipping wine with winery owners who spit their wine out in a seemingly ... [Read More]
travel
Solvang: California’s Taste of Denmark
One of the things that I love about living in California is that there are so many cool areas to go on road trips to, both within the state and in neighboring ones. I've been itching to go on a weekend getaway, and so at the end of last week, my husband and I journeyed to the Santa Barbara area for a few days of wine tasting, hiking, and exploring the Danish capital of America - a town called Solvang. I like traveling to unique little places, and Solvang is definitely just that. It's a quaint, Danish-styled town in the Santa Ynez Valley that was founded a little over 100 years ago, and is home to a population of just 5,000+ people. Solvang is about a 4-hour drive from where I live in northern San Diego County. Pretty much the whole drive, you're traveling right up the Pacific Coast ... [Read More]
{Story Time} My Paranormal Experience in Williams, Arizona
Hey guys! Today I'm sharing a post that's sort of off-topic, but I've had it on my mind since Halloween, when a friend of mine brought up one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. I got to thinking about how I've never talked about it on the blog before. I want to share this story partly because if there are other people who have experienced the same thing, doing some Googling would hopefully lead them here. I also want to preface this by saying that I'm fully aware that this story might sound kind of unbelievable to some people - as paranormal stories often do. Hell, if you would have told my husband this very story prior to him experiencing it himself, he would have just thought you were crazy. Well, now that I'm probably weirding you all out, here goes with my scary ... [Read More]
Homemade Snacks to Bring Camping
If you know me at all, you know that my packing for a trip always involves food. Even if I’m going to a gorgeous hotel in Italy where I’ll be eating my weight in pasta, I still bring some snacks for the travel there. This is because A.) I get hungry a lot, B.) I'm not happy when I’m hangry, C.) You never know when you’ll be stuck somewhere with zero even remotely healthy food choices, and D.) I like to snack and have a paranoia about starving to death. Sounds a bit dramatic, but I think this relates back to my mom and grandma always pushing offering food to everyone, making way too much food for meals and always having snacks on-hand. So you can imagine my thought process when packing for our camping trip to Catalina Island. I was all: “What are we going to eat the whole ... [Read More]
A Visit to The Hoover Dam
Last week while in Vegas, my co-worker and I ventured over to the Hoover Dam to check it out. When staying there, we always try to do something outside of work and the strip. Last year, we went to Red Rock Canyon, and a free afternoon this time allowed for a visit to the famous dam. Five facts about Hoover Dam: 1.) It was constructed in the 1930s and spans the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizona and Nevada. (The left of the photo is in Nevada, the right in Arizona) 2.) Building the dam required more than 5 million barrels of concrete, enough to create a two-lane highway from Seattle to Miami. 3.) 21,000 men worked on building the dam over the course of its construction. It's estimated that around 110 of them died while building the dam. 4.) The dam's generators ... [Read More]
My Favorite Foods to Pack for Trips
Hi there! Hope that you all are having a fabulous weekend. Mine is going very good so far. I leave for Las Vegas in the morning for a work trip, so here I am, yet again procrastinating packing and instead blogging....not surprising given that I was doing the exactly same thing about 10 days ago before my last trip! Speaking of traveling, today I want to talk about packing food for trips. Traveling can be so unpredictable. Maybe you'll have healthy food options available, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you'll be in a rush, while other times your grumbling belly causes you to buy overpriced crappy food at the airport while waiting for your delayed flight to get moving. And since I'm paranoid about going hungry without any good options around (I blame this on my mother, who always has ... [Read More]