Extra Cheese, please

Day 5: July 27, 2011 Rogue Valley, OR

Remember how I mentioned Chris was smart enough not to make me wake up early and run about two days in a row? Right, so day 5 was another sleep in leisurely day. Plus, we were in Rogue Valley and it turned out there weren't really a lot of wineries in Rogue Valley that had wines from the Forgotten Grapes. BUT...there was a Rogue Valley cheese shop!! With all the wine we'd been tasting and still would be tasting, clearly we needed cheese. We bought some blue, some goat, some tasty local stuff and some really wonderful rosemary crackers and headed off to see what wineries we could see.

Our only stop turned out to be at Longsword Vineyard and Fly High Vineyard (they share a tasting room) where we had a pleasant tasting of their wines and our cheeses out on the patio.

And then we hit the road--a 4 1/2 hour drive down to Lake County, California. And that drive turned out to be spectacular fun for us.

We were a little too focused on the wine in planning our trip and thus, manged to be very surprised by this:

 

That's Mt. Shasta, and I'm guessing it's been there awhile. Still managed to be news to us. But it wasn't nearly as surprising as this:

We thought it would be more crowded. Sort of a popular destination, if you know what I mean.

We also were unable to resist pulling off the highway to see the "world famous sun dial bridge" at Turtle Bay in Redding, California. You can see why it's world famous, right?

These were the only turtles we saw at Turtle Bay though:

 I was a little disappointed that the museum was already closed. But...we had an exciting night ahead. Oh yes sirree. Because this is where we stayed:

Rancheria Resort Casino. Emphasis on Resort....no.... emphasis on "Casino"...well, no, emphasis on "Rancheria." But yeah, we stayed here. God I love road trips like this.