Wineries and Graveyards

October 15, 2012

We left the U.P. on Saturday morning and made it as far as Dubuque, Iowa that night.  It was a really long pull for one day, over 350 miles.  Usually, we try not to go over 200 miles.  We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot there.  We asked the manager when we pulled in if it was okay to put our slides out.  He said no problem.  It would have been perfect if we hadn't been parked at a slight angle.  Couldn't put our leveling jacks out as we were still hooked up to the truck so we spent a "crooked" night.  At least our heads were above our feet and we were able to watch our satellite TV!

The next day we drove another 300 miles to land in Montgomery City, Missouri, home of the Lazy Days Campground, where we stayed for a week.  As luck would have it, Missouri's changing fall color was at it's peak, so we got to experience the change all over again.  Wow!  Being such a "desert/city" girl, I enjoyed every changing tree the second time around.

Missouri color

By the time Monday rolled around, we were ready to do something fun.  Jim had spent much of the past two days driving.  I finally got to drive the rig myself on the way to Missouri so Jim could take a nap.  It was raining the entire first day on the way to Dubuque and I got to drive through the rain....I thought I would be nervous but after the first five minutes I was able to relax and enjoy the experience.

We decided to go visit one of my favorite wineries, the Stone Hill Winery in Hermann, Missouri.  This was the third time we had visited this winery.  They have fabulous red wines made from Norton grapes.  I haven't found this kind of wine anywhere else yet.  I believe it is a regional grape.  We had lunch there as well, at their Vintage 1847 Restaurant.

Entrance to the restaurant

Jim posted a few pictures from there on FaceBook the day we were there.  We don't usually drink with our meals but since we were at a winery, of course we had a glass of wine with our meal.  Superb!  Bought a few bottles for the wine cabinet in the trailer.

Inside Stone Hill Winery

Who, me?

We visited two more wineries today, the Alan Puchta Winery and the Oak Glen Winery, also in Hermann. Bought wines from both and managed to fill my 12-bottle wine cabinet today with great wines! 





















On the way back to the trailer we were driving down one of the lesser known highways, sightseeing, and came across this small cemetary.  Of course we stopped!  Jim knows better than to pass up a graveyard when I'm in the truck. 

Just a child

We spent an hour wandering among the graves, wondering aloud at the history and family ties.  Reading headstones can be a basic genealogy lesson as well as an emotional testimony to the past.  There was a gravestone from a man who was born in 1789 and died in 1845.  His name was Rees Bryan. I actually looked him up on the Ancestry.com website and found him and his family.  Children's graves are the saddest to come upon, especially when we see multiple children from the same parents.  Their lives were hard.

 Interesting day.

Sighted on the way home