Thanksgiving in NorCal
And back to Napa we go - this time through Rio Vista, Jim and Mingo's new home near the Sacramento River on the western edge of California's Central Valley. Their home is beautiful and has quick access to the Bay Area, Tahoe and the Napa and Sonoma Valley regions. As we came to the end of our 3-hour adventure from SFO to Rio Vista (traffic and accidents were crazy), dusk was falling and out across the valley off Highway 12 came a see of flashing red lights, all in sync with one another. I knew that there were parts of the area that had turbines, but (for whatever reason) was surprised to see this many of them down on the flats by the delta. I was also surprised by the sky - light pollution is usually really bad anywhere near a population base like the Bay Area, but between the mountains and being just enough removed from the bigger towns and cities, the stars were popping. This shot was taken from just outside of Jim and Mingo's backyard.
The next morning we cruised over towards town because Deuce wanted to check out the Rio Vista Bridge (technically now the Helen Madere Memorial Bridge) - a vertical lift bridge giving access to larger boats up the Sacramento River. It's a two lane lift bridge which in today's day and age means backups of traffic can get quite bad along Hwy 12, a central route in the Valley. The solution? A new bridge. Ok, easy. With a price tag of $1 billion ... with a "B". Well, maybe get used to traffic, I would suspect ...
After lunch in Rio Vista (at the local legend, Foster's Bighorn, full of all the big game taxidermy you might desire! And a good cheesesteak too ...), we headed up to Napa to get checked-in to officially kick off Thanksgiving. Annie's sister Sarah and her kiddos made it up later that night and the next day we wanted to get everyone out to enjoy the nice weather. In years past the kids have played nice and joined us in checking out some family-friendly wineries, but this year we would go "towards them", so the adventure center was the plan! After a few quick shots with Sarah, Samantha, and Christopher (with Deuce as my assistant), we were off to Fairfield for some fun.
Family is what Thanksgiving is about, and the next day we went up to pick up Annie's grandfather, Poppa Mazzei, and were joined by Ro and Rick's family to finish off our crew.
Good times, great food, plenty of vino and maybe a bit much of the 1792 (but that's another story!) were had by all.
I always have a camera with me and Napa is a great place to shoot. Gorgeous area. We didn't get enough time for me to shoot as much as I wanted to (never enough) but I did get to capture a bit of the trip around Napa and finally a gorgeous sunrise in The City on our way to SFO to head home.
