Snow!?

Sunday morning we awoke to this weird noise outside...something falling off our yurt. It was snow! Enough to be pretty but not enough to delay our trip back home. Of course we had to wander around and take pictures and see the horses before we left. We packed up our things checked out and did just that :o) What I nice way to end our little get away. :o)

Skyline Drive

This is the drive we took from the Luray Caverns to Afton. It was beautiful and it would have been nice if we had time to stop and get out and wander around at some of the sites but maybe next time!

Luray Caverns

So part of the reason we decided to drive out to Afton Vineyards was that we were in VA and wanted to visit the caverns but they were so far away. Well, an hour and a half away. Se we decided to just make a day trip out of it. Visit some caverns, take a ride down the Skyline Drive which later meets up with the Blue Ridge Parkway, and then get off and drive on over to Afton to the vineyard.

We visited the Luray Caverns. It was actually pretty cool. I've never seen anything like it. They even had an organ in there that played on some of the stalactites.

The next two photos are over a "lake" and you can see the reflection in the water. It almost seemed like glass.

Here is the organ. It was some hammers attached to different stalactites. They pull and hit them to create different sounds.

Wino

So apparently the main attraction around where we were is the wineries. Neither one of us is really a wine drinker or had ever gone to a tasting but we figured why not. The scenery was so pretty although the grapevines weren't in bloom. They were still pretty cool to look at.

This was the first one we went to. I believe it was called Keswick. We had a really great experience. The girl who took care of us even let us in the back so Andy could see the process. That was probably his favorite part of the whole trip even if there wasn't much going on at that time. My favorite thing there was this chocolate sauce. They used it to show you how the tannins in different wines are effected by certain foods and that's why you have red wines with red meats and white wines generally with sweets or poultry. I talked Andy into the chocolate sauce of course. It was incredibly good.

 The second place we visited was Horton Vineyards. I have to admit, after visiting there and having a tasting I might actually enjoy wine. They say they are the new generation of wine which I think means it's just much sweeter than anything I've ever tasted. They even had chocolate wine and the white chocolate wine was actually really good. They also had fruit wines where they added fruit juices to the wine just like they did with the chocolate wines. Some of them tasted nothing like wine while others you could still very much taste the wine.

 The last winery we visited was Afton Vineyards. It was quite a drive but that was half the adventure which I'll get to later...

This vineyard had the prettiest location but the wine I wasn't to fond of. It was quite bitter after having visited Horton the day before. I'm just glad the weather wasn't terrible. It was on a mountain and a lot of the road was made for only one car. It was REALLY pretty up there though.