fruits of the valley.

It's Tuesday--and today, I have another dose of wine country for you! In the midst of the 

craziness of the last few weeks, my California recap posts have gotten shoved to the side...

so I hope you'll indulge me as I finally wrap up the trip this week. In order to avoid a 

complete picture dump, you're going to get one more helping of California on Thursday ;)

For our sixth day out west, we let someone else do the driving--which allowed us to really

enjoy the fruits of the valley. We scheduled a tour through Platypus Tours, which ended up

being a phenomenal decision. Here are a few photos from our stops along the way...

Platypus plans the tour based on where they make the pick-ups of their passengers. Since we 

were coming from the town of Napa and the other three adventurers were staying in Calistoga, 

the stellar tour director centered our tour in the northern part of Napa Valley. Our first stop of 

the day was at Castella di Amorosa, which was more for the castle than for the wine. From

there, we headed to the small and quaint Summers Estate, where we also enjoyed a light lunch

provided by Platypus. It ranked as one of our favorite because of its intimate tasting room and 

the bocce court in the backyard!

Frank Family Vineyards was next. It has a beautiful set-up and definitely had a bigger crowd than Summers, though I think that is because the Frank Family has a few more pennies to spend to 

promote their winery. Our day on the road ended at another small, family-run vineyard called the 

Dutch Henry Winery. Admittedly, this part of the day gets a little foggy {we had been to four

wineries by this point!}, but I remember two things very distinctly: yummy wine and a barn-cat 

named Miguelina, who was a dead ringer for our Lucy. {cv} also won a trivia contest before

we wrapped up the tour and won me a sweet prize. He's so good to me ;)

At the end of it all, taking a Platypus Tour made our sixth day in the Golden State that much 

better. We didn't have to worry about anything and had so much fun with the {d}s--

we laughed and enjoyed each other just like the old days back in Charlotte! 

On your travels, what have you done to help make your trip worry-free?

I hope your week got off to a splendid start! I can't wait to hear your travel tips :)

More from little ol' me tomorrow--xoxo {av}

if you're in the mood for more of California, here are the photos from earlier in our trip:

day one + day two + day three + day four + day five