Last week we spent a few days in Napa as the guests of Dan’s former co-workers. On Tuesday we went on a hike northeast of Calistoga. It was a rainy Wednesday and we spent part of the afternoon on a tour of the Castello di Amorosa Winery.
The Castle was designed by Dario Sattui who modeled it after European 13th Century castles that fascinated him.
His blog tells about the evolution of his plan and the construction. The original plan in 1993 was for 8500 square feet, but by the time the Castle was complete in 2007, it was 136,000 square feet with 107 rooms and eight levels, four of which are below ground.
Sattui brought builders, brick-workers, and others from Europe and shipped containers full of old bricks, doors, hardware, and all kinds of other building materials that had been sourced from old castles in Europe. 
Although my first thought when I heard about this place was that I would the resent pretentiousness of spending this much money and “showing off”, but this is a fascinating place and it is very cool to visit it. 
The Great Hall.
There is an authentic 13th century fireplace at the end of the Great Hall. The guide told us that those two chairs are “authentic replicas”–they were left behind by a movie company who used this setting.
Dan noticed all of the iron work. All of it, including the bolts and nails was hand made. 
Stone is all hand-chiseled.
After walking through some of those ground-level rooms we saw the equipment that is used in modern wine-making.
But then we went downstairs into the lower levels.
There are 900 feet of caves in four levels.
This barrel room is constructed with impressive brick Roman cross-vaulted ceilings.
Barrel tasting in the barrel room.
I will admit here that I am not a wine drinker. Dan and I were both more interested in the tour than the wine tasting but we stayed for that too. There were only about a dozen of us and the guide-turned-wine-expert poured about 8 or 9 different wines to sample.
I finally found a wine that I liked…
… and I’ll admit that it’s sweet and a little fizzy so I might as well just buy fizzy juice at Safeway, right? 
Leaving the castle. This door reminds me of the one in the Wizard of Oz moviewhere the wizard opens the little panel to look through at Dorothy.
View from the Castle to the hills where we hiked the day before.
After leaving we headed back down the valley. Someone had suggested a tour or a stop at the CIA. My first thought was that would be interesting since I read a lot of suspense/intrigue books, but a CIA headquarters in Napa? It didn’t take me too long to get the context–Culinary Institute of America. I had driven by this for years, first as the Christian Brothers Winery, but had never gone in.
I took one photo and then my phone died. So this is it–one of hundreds of odd corkscrews and other wine related gadgets. You know, the feet are some of the few parts of the butcher lambs that aren’t used at this time. Could this be in my future?
The Robert Louis Stevenson State Park to the north of the highway is closed but the Table Rock trail is south of the highway.
The trail starts out in groves of oak, madrone, and bay trees. This area was damp from recent rain and the trees looked as though they were covered with green fur.
A new kind of 
Making things larger than life through the lens.
As the trail descended the other side of the first ridge the vegetation seemed more typical of California chaparral. These are the seeds of the California Buckeye.
The California buckeye is one of the first deciduous trees to leaf out in the spring, but it also goes dormant and loses it’s leaves in late summer. Although the “nuts” may seem similar to chestnuts, these are toxic.
The trail leads to the western end of a formation called the Palisades, volcanic rock that towers over the northern end of the Napa Valley.
That is the town of Calistoga down below. 
We sat on the rocks known as Table Rock for quite awhile, soaking up the sun and watching birds and the beautiful sky. The fire missed this area, but not Mt. St. Helena in the background and the lower area along the highway.
As we sat on the rocks Dan noticed a Cal Fire plane flying around Mt. St. Helena and then saw it drop something–we wonder of that is seed to help stabilize the burned landscape.
This local church was booked for any of the Fibershed group who wanted to spend the night after the long day at the Symposium.
It is a great place to stay for anyone traveling in that area. 
This was originally a house that was purchased from the Frick family in 1950 and turned into a church. There is a fascinating multi-level maze of rooms and halls and stairways. This view looks down from the third floor on what was originally the family’s living room.
I love this dining area, partly because the table is of the same era (at least from looking at some of it’s features) as the table that my mom bought and we still use, although this one is in much better shape than ours.
I stayed in this bedroom with five other women. There are several bedrooms with different numbers of beds. I think the place can accommodate 36 people.
When I got up on Sunday morning I decided to take a walk before our meeting and headed up a road I found behind the church.
This is my kind of Sunday morning.
The road I found led me back down to the main road and Tomales Bay.
It is great when you find open space accessible to the public.
Rebecca pointed out huckleberries which were still on the bushes, although the normal harvest season was over. I wouldn’t have known and would have avoided these unknown berries.
Stephanie (wearing her handknit Jacob sweater) ate her share as did the rest of us.
This is a much wetter area than where I usually find myself and there were still signs of the previous night’s rain.
Another testament to the dampness were the large slugs that we saw.
The view overlooking Tomales Bay. What a beautiful day we had!
As we were coming back down from the ridge that has a view of the ocean, another hiker coming up the hill saw our silhouettes and offered to take our photo. This is the view that she saw.
Meridian Jacobs' Blog 