Fairfield is located in Suisun Valley, just twelve miles from Napa, you find yourself surrounded by "real" wine country. Not the huge, commercial tourist traps, but the actual vineyards where most of the grapes made in Napa wines are grown. There are growers, wine makers and some who do both. It's a Gals weekend getaway

We received a lot of advice about getting to Yosemite early, parking in one of the main lots and then taking the Shuttle, which takes you to just about every popular place, or you can hike from those popular places to where you want to be. This was our plan until my 14-year-old daughter sprained her ankle literally two days before our trip and ended up on crutches.  Our plans for hiking now had to be adjusted to Plan B: driving and parking as close to the sights as possible.

JD has dreams and has goals: part of those intersect with her Venice dreams and parenting goals.  It was time to check visiting Venice Italy off the bucket list, so JD set off to visit Venice Italy and experience it with her daughter.

Along one of the turns, we saw a crashed van pulling a boat on the side of the road where yellow caution tape was up. We all had our theories about what possibly could have happened. Did the van get too close to the edge? Did foul play happen because it looked like gunshots in the windows? We’ll never know. We pulled over by the lake for a picnic lunch and enjoyed the serene views. When we got to the dam, we stopped and marveled at the history of all that this land holds and tried to imagine riding this trail via stagecoach. It was an adventure even by car.