Walla Walla wines while wandering Washington wildlands

Palouse Falls State Park

 

Allison, Jay's mom, came and spent a glorious 11 days with us in Washington this July. She landed on a Thursday night so we crashed in Seattle before driving out east to Walla Walla on Friday. On our way east we finally stopped, after all these years, to check out Snoqualmie Falls.

 

Our first stop on the eastern Washington wine tour was Treveri Cellars - a winery that specializes in sparking wines. They had a lovely outdoor setting and they let us bring in our own food to enjoy while we tasted their wines. Most wineries in WA charge for tastings.....pretty lame. But not Treveri. Probably because the owners are German and they don't charge for tastings in Germany (according to our friend Kat who is Luxembourgian). Figs from a friend's tree, good blue cheese, and a dry sparking blanc de noir. Life is grand!

Next stop - the Tri-Cities area near Walla Walla where we met a man selling his Explorer kayak on Craigslist. Here is Jay giving it a test paddle on the Columbia River....we bought it! Jay couldn't keep up with me in my slick new wooden boat, so we decided to upgrade his boat from a beefy plastic number to a slick fiberglass beauty. He named her Iridaea after a gorgeous red algae (my boat is named Alaria after a gorgeous brown kelp). Yes, we are nerds.

 First thing we did in Walla Walla? Buy garlic and cheese at the Farmer's Market!

Hands down the best winery we went to was Syzygy. Here is Allison with Zach, the winemaker. Zach walked us through all his wines and told us about his awesome labels. Because "syzygy" refers to the perfect alignment between three celestial bodies, his labels reflect areas of the earth where total eclipses could been seen the year the wine was bottled. Jay and I bought a bottle of his amazing Syrah for an anniversary treat some day....and it just so happens that Indonesia is on the label. Perfect for us eh?

Lavender was in bloom by many of the vineyards

 Had a lovely cheese, bread, and wine lunch at aMaurice Cellars.

On our long drive back to Anacortes we stopped at Palouse Falls State Park - a park I had been dying to see for a long time. If you look at the top photo of this blog you can see the panoramic that includes views of the impressive canyon. To get here you drive north from Walla Walla for about an hour through rolling hills of wheat. It was vast, lonely, and it reminded Allison and me a lot of Wallace Stegner and his novels.

We had several wonderful evenings in Anacortes before heading over to Lopez Island for a day of exploration. We found a new trail that we had never explored before that took us out to Point Colville and incredible views of Mt. Baker.

 Allison, Point Colville, and Mt. Baker

 The quintessential Washington photograph from Lopez Island

We spent another weekend day with Allison exploring parts of Skagit County. We had breakfast at our favorite breakfast place called Tweets, we picked blueberries at Bow Hill Blueberries, and they slurped oysters at Taylor Shellfish on Samish Bay. We hate it when our parents leave because we have so much fun together. We can't wait to see everyone in our family when we head back east at the end of September for family time and a wedding!

Photos from Allison's trip and the rest of July can be found here: https://goo.gl/photos/CbbcQ1Zbbwty4MCaA