A great Saturday

Jeff and I had a fun-filled weekend, especially on Saturday. We got up Saturday morning and headed over to Murphy, CA to visit Ironstone winery. Jeff had been there for a work outing, but I had never seen and have heard amazin things. The place is absolutely gorgeous! We took a tour of the winery and were able to see some neat things. Here is a picture diary of the tour:

Our first stop was in the museum. We went into the vault and saw the world's largest gold nugget (above). It weighs just over 44 lbs.! It was really cool to see. On our next trip, we will definitely look more in the museum, as we didn't have enough time to browse around.

We then headed down into the tunnels (caves) beneath the main building. It is where all of the wine is made and where the barrels are stored (above are some of the barrels in part of the cave). A fun fact we found out - the door to one of the caves was used as the door sounds in the movie "Casper the friendly ghost". It was a great sound for a movie like that! There were also natural waterways in the caves that looked like many waterfalls. It almost reminded me of the movie "Goonies" when they are walking underground by the well. Below is a picture of Jeff and I in front of one of the "waterfalls".

The landscaping of the winery is amazing. They have around 12 full-time landscape artists working year-round. Above you can see "IRONSTONE" wrote out in the bushes.

We were then able to head into the dining room area where many weddings take place. On the back wall their is an organ that takes up the entire wall. It is now all computerized and we were able to listen to a couple of songs on it. It was so loud, but very fun to listen to.

It is daffodil days in Murphy and it was amazing to see all of the flowers. On the road leading to Ironstone there were a ton of flowers springing up. It was so gorgeous!

We walked around the town of Murphy for a while and had a late lunch at an old ice cream parlor. It was delicious. We then headed up to Elk Grove for Brian and Melissa's going away party. Brian was transferred to a new plant with General Mills. Below is a picture of Patrick, Brian, Kara and Melissa at the party.

The weather has been so nice here. I can't complain about weather in the high 70s and low 80s! I am on spring break this week, although I am still kind of working, having meetings, and doing homework! However, it has been nice to sit outside and do homework :-)