On Heading Home after a Good Weekend

The long weekend in Chelan (sadly) comes to an end today but I'm looking forward to the drive home. We've some gorgeous terrain to revisit as we retrace the miles back to Seattle. I'm hoping to check out some fresh produce stands; the local asparagus should be great right now.

I'm also salivating over the requisite stop at the DQ in Cle Elum for the soft serve vanilla cone. I strayed from my usual on Thursday last and ate a hot fudge sundae; not nearly as good as the cone. Something about the cold ice cream and the crunch of the cone does me in. Gotta. have. it.  Denny will sit in the car, indulging my persuasion patiently. He'll only eat one of DQ's cones if it's dipped in that waxy chocolate stuff. Oh well, leaves more for me.

This weekend has been all about rest, walks by the lake, food and visits  to local wineries offering barrel tasting this weekend. Barrel tasting? That was a new one for us but quite interesting. On the  third weekend of May, wineries in this area offer a taste of their youngest wines, right from the barrel. We tasted a Pinot Noir that won't be bottled for several  more years and (kind of) got the sense of what the wine would become. That sort of expertise we'll leave to the vintners but it was fun nonetheless. As usual, we ended up buying lots of wine; mostly white but some of those nice(older) pinot noirs as well. My sad comment was, "There's a headache in every bottle". Oh well.

Another nice treat was to read an entire, albeit short, book this weekend.  I loved the feel of a "real" book in hand after "Kindling" for the last years. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is but 129 pages but  each one reads like poetry. She's a beautiful writer.. The first few chapters were especially touching, personal and full of longing. Now there's a good book.

As an aside, Denny wouldn't touch this book with a ten foot pole. We have such disparate tastes in what constitutes a good read. Even the books I think he'll love, like Killing Lincoln  or  11/23/63, are met with comments like......"it's OK", "or, " it's taking me awhile to get into it". Seriously; it took the man 6 weeks to finish King's 11/23/63 which I'd purchased him for Christmas.  He probably finished it because he can tough out almost anything (think of those law books), even  Moby Dick back in the day. What he won't do is get started on one of my hard core reads; he can tell in an instant that it's literary poison. I digress.

So,  now we head home. Here's to ice cream and asparagus. But, not together. And, no wine either.