Good wine, good food, and the music was.....

well, we weren't really impressed.

We went over to Wrightsville, PA (in York county) to Moon Dancer Vineyards and Winery for their 6th Annual Reds, Whites and Blues festival.  We had a fun time trying some of their wines and eating some roast pork sandwiches and listening to some blues bands.  Here is their web site: Moon Dancer Vineyards and Winery.  Their next music festival features Reggae and is in early August sometime.

After yesterday's hike from hell (see our previous post...Hiking in Catoctin Mountain Park) we decided to have a more relaxed adventure to allow our bodies to recover.  So we headed out to Moon Dancer to try some wine and listen to some music.  The winery is pretty close to Gettysburg.  It only took us about an hour to get there.  Traffic wasn't bad so we enjoyed the ride up and back.

The facility they have at the winery is awesome.  Very nice building setup to accommodate folks indoors and out.  We were able to get a table on the patio under an umbrella so we had shade for most of the time we were there.  See the pictures below for some shots of the winery, the winos and a nice shot of the Susquehanna in the background.

They have some very nice wines.  I liked a semi-sweet white called Moon River White.  Pam liked a couple of fruity wines, Cisco's Peach and Murhphy's Blueberry.  She says if you really like blueberries, then you will love the Murphy's Blueberry wine.  Unfortunately it was TSO (temporarily sold out) so we didn't get a bottle.

We settled on a sweet red that we both liked called Malibu's Red.  Very nice and grapey taste.  Went real well with our roast pork sandwiches!  We had one or two glasses each while eating and listening to the band and just enjoying the day and each other.

Speaking of the band, we listened to two of them.  One was pretty good, nice sound and a good selection of songs.  The second one was good in their own way.  The music was tight and sounded really good, but we just couldn't enjoy the guy singing.  He was one of those blues singers who thinks that you are supposed to sound like you have a mouth full of marbles to be good.  Wasn't working for us.  The guitar player sang a couple and he was much better!  All in all they were tight as musicians, just need a different singer.  Of course, this is just our opinion and YMMV (your mileage may vary!)

So, another wine festival under out belts!  We had a very nice day together and found another winery with some product that we like and would recommend.  Can't wait for the next wine festival!

Until the next adventure....

Hiking in Catoctin Mountain Park

Wow, what a workout.....

We went up to Catoctin Mountain Park (near Thurmont, MD just off of RT 15) today to hike some of the trails.  Here's a link to the website:  Catoctin Mountain park

Pam has been up here a lot and likes hiking in the park.  We left the rangers station and headed up the mountain to Wolf Rock.  What a trail!!!  The first .4/mile was pretty much straight up!  Not rock climbing straight up, but the trail is pretty steep.  Whew, I knew I was out of shape, but damn!!!!  We took a break at the first intersection of trails and then after I had caught my breath, headed on.  The next section was still steep, but not as bad as the first section.  At the next intersection, we rested again and only had about .5mile left to go.  The trail actually leveled off and even went downhill for a bit.  Then we came to it:  Wolf Rock!

From the trail Wolf Rock is just a solid rock wall that is about 30-40 feet high.  Follow the rock to the right for just a bit and you come to a section where you can climb up to the top of the rock.  This is really cool!  The rock is an exposed ridge of quartzite rock.  You can see where slabs of the rock are braking off and separating.  The rock is about 200 million years old!!!!  We walked around on the top of the ridge for a while and got a couple of pictures (note to self....take the camera next time...the iPhone just doesn't cut it!)  I will see if I can upload them to the blog in a bit.  Pictures are below!

Anyway, after our time on Wolf Rock we started back to the ranger station.  Along the way we missed a left turn and ended up walking a loooooonnnnggggg circle around to the station.  We did get to see the Thurmont Vista and it's view of the town of Thurmont, MD.  Pretty cool.   Also, the walk was a bit easier than the other trail would have been.  The down side (I made a funny!!) was that this added an extra 1.5 miles to our total walk.  If we had gone up and back on the same trail we would have walked about 3 miles total.  With the extended walk, we actually did a little over 4.5 miles!  Whew!!!

Anyway, it was way fun and a good workout.  Came home and had some lunch and then a nap!!  If you live near Catoctin Mountain, you need to head on up, walk the trails and see the sights!!  Next time we are going to Cunningham Falls.  Oh, and as a side bar, part of the park was closed off today due to......the fact that President Obama was at Camp David!!  That's right, Camp David sits right in the middle of the park!

If you don't know where Catoctin Mountain is....well you can Google it or just to give you a general idea, it is right off RT 15 at Thurmont, MD.  That is about 1/2 way between Frederick, MD and Gettysburg, PA.

Well, that's it for this adventure......see you soon with a new story to tell!!

An adventure from earlier this summer....

On May 22, 2010, we attended the Taste of Hanover (PA) Wine Festival.  For both of us this was our first wine festival! We had a blast!  Tasted a lot of wines and found that we liked about half of them.  We settled on two favorites, one red/one white, and bought a bottle of each.  Of course being the winos that we are.....we have yet to open either bottle!  Anyway, we enjoyed tasting the wines and trying new things.  We both tried (and didn't like!) mead for the first time.  We also tried a wine (I forget the vineyard/name) that was good either chilled or hot!!!!  We have the info around here somewhere and will most likely get a bottle of that in the near future. 

We also had a couple of really good pit beef sandwiches and some fresh ice tea to wash them down.  They had music as well.  Had a guy playing hard rock (Pink Floyd/Jimmy Hendrix/etc) on acoustic guitar and it was pretty awesome!  Enjoyed his set selection while we walked around the festival. 

We are looking to go to other wine festivals during the summer and fall.  If you've never been to one and you like wine (even a little bit like we do) then it is worth going to one.  You will most certainly find something that you like and get to taste and discover different vineyards and wine types.

Introduction!

Hello and welcome to our blog!!  Oh boy, I can tell you are as excited as we are!  Just what the world needs, another person posting inane (and usually uninteresting) comments about their mundane life!  Well, I'd like to say that this blog will be different.....but, alas, I can't!  We (well, mostly me, Craig) will be using this blog to record our adventures and time together.  Hopefully our friends can enjoy some of them with us.  Eventually, our grandchildren (take your time kids, we can wait!) will be able to read them and learn more about their grandpa and grandma.

So, we are off....stay tuned (or don't) and maybe you can enjoy some good times with us!

Craig and Pam