My Chicago Garden

Wine country in Paso Robles. The most interesting part of the day so far has actually been visiting an olive oil farm (Pasolivo) and doing a tasting and tour. I didnt realize just how bad the olive oil I have been buying from the local grociery stores realy is. Doesn’t even taste like olives when I compare to Pasolivo’s various bottles. And I was trying to be selective and buying only the ‘good stuff’. Argh!

Sorry for the horrible picture, the camera on my phone sucks in low light conditions (actually any condition). We had a wonderful dinner at Ristorante de Gaetano in Paso Robles, CA. Our B&B hosts told us most of the good restaurants in town are closed sunday night, but my wife found this little italian place in the menu binder at the B&B. It’s an unassuming little store front in an average looking part of town, but the inside is familial and the food was wonderful. Gaetano stopped by the table several times to chat and was very personable (that’s him in the fuzzy picture). He made a wonderful local wine recommendation for our meal, although he tried to steer us towards an Italian wine at first :). If you are in the area and looking for a great Italian meal I would highly recommend Gaetano’s. How does the chef make the risotto like that?!? Mine never looks and taste that good. Dang It!

Elephant Seals at Point Piedras Blancas off highway one on our way down to Paso Robles.

What an anniversary should be like, if you fail to climb a peak. We are heading to Paso Robles tomorrow for a quiet stay in a B&B.

We called off the trip early. In short, I was over ambitious planning for 8 days. The pack weight of nearly 40lbs (necessary for 8 days) was way too heavy. We think we could have done Mt. Lyell if we had planned for only 3 nights not 7 and the pack weight was down around 20lbs. The massive amounts of mosquitos at our planned base camp precluded us staying the remaining 5 days and ‘laying siege’ to Lyell. We decide to hike the 12 miles back out we just came in the night before and find a less streanous way to spend our anniversary. We had fun anyway, and Im glad we tried. Lessons learned.