July 2014 – Stefania Wine

July 29, 2014

Utah Pictures Set Two – Bryce to Moab

We arrived at Bryce in the mid morning. It was cold with temperatures never getting above 40. We stayed at the lodge on a last minute reservation and enjoyed it a great deal. The restaurant at the lodge was nice and kept us on our Primal plan. We took a few pictures at the rim and then went on a hike down into the canyon. The rim of the canyon was very crowded and noisy with tour buses and the crowds stayed on the trail about 200 feet down in the canyon when it finally thinned out and calmed down. The hike seemed easy after Angel’s Landing the day before with a lot less climbing.

I think we did about 6 miles in 2 and a half hours. We took our time climbing out.

It was a beautiful day and it was nice to hike in the cold. The trail was wide and easy to follow as well. We took a ton of pictures.

This is a a formation on the trail out of the canyon that gives a good idea of the trail and some of the sites along the way.

We woke up before dawn the next day to try and get some sunrise pictures. We had been a little late from dinner the night before to get really good sunset pictures. We packed up and hit the road again. Our plan was to drive and stop and hike along the way with the thought we might get to Moab, or we might stop at Capitol Reef.

Our first detour was in the Escalante monument to the Grosvenor Arch. It was about 15 miles of dirt road to get there and we beat any other people out there other than someone who had camped at the arch.

A couple of people had recommended the Lower Calf Creek Falls after we mentioned that we might hike there. We had a little trouble finding it off the road but once we did we set off on what turned out to be a six mile hike. My expectations on the falls were actually pretty low. I figured a desert stream in the late spring would be a little trickle of water. It was actually very impressive with a good volume of water and over a 100 foot drop. It was definitely a worthwhile diversion.

The hike put us in a bit of a scheduling difficulty. We wouldn’t really have any time to hike in Capitol Reef or go off road there so we decided to just drive through to Moab. It was a long drive but we arrived in time to find a hotel and get some dinner.

July 27, 2014

Utah Pictures – Set One Valley of Fire to Zion

We left San Jose on a Thursday afternoon and spent the night between San Jose and Las Vegas. Our first goal was St George Utah to spend the weekend with family there. We loaded up the FJ Cruiser and packed in all our Primal food. We were a little worried about finding non grain food in Southern Utah but it turned out to be pretty easy, especially inside the Parks.

Our first stop was the Valley of Fire out side of Las Vegas. I really enjoyed it and we hiked for about 4 hours total. We got lost once and had to use the GPS on Map My Walk to get us back to the car. I really recommend this if the weather is right, especially if you’re like me and don’t really enjoy Vegas very much.

There were all kinds of great rock formations and tons of rock art in the park. We were late for cocktail hour in St. George or I could have done 2 more hikes there easy!

After a great weekend with family we headed into Zion on Monday. That’s Angel Landing below and we climbed that thing. My day job actually called about 1/2 way up and wanted to know if I could get on a conference call.

A view of the trail and valley about 1/2 way up.

A good part of the hike includes climbing along chains. My knuckles were banged up for a couple of weeks.

We also hike up the Narrow a bit and did the complete bus tour of the valley. We spent the night just outside of the park and the next morning headed out towards Bryce Canyon with a stop to take a picture of Checkerboard Mesa along the way.

July 25, 2014

More Catching Up – What We’re Eating.

One reason we’ve not been blogging has been the number of other things we’re working on and doing this year. There’s been lots of hiking, including a trip through the National Parks in Utah (I’ll get some pictures from that trip up soon, it was fantastic) and right before that we started the Primal Blueprint and did a 21 Day Challenge.

There really was not a huge change to what we were cooking and eating and I already had a good workout routine going. There were somethings in the blueprint that were hard to believe, like you’d eventually stop thinking about what you’re eating, or you’d go 10,12,14 hours without feeling hungry, but those things have all happened. The plate below I call a Primal Treat Tray. The salami is home made and cured in our wine cellar.

We’re eating lots of meat and grass fed beef when we can find it. I’ve joked with friends that this is the ‘Rib Eye and Bourbon Diet’. I’ve had more rib eye steaks in the last 4 months than I can count. One of the attraction of this plan was that unlike other similar plans drinks are ok, and wine is highly recommended! Bourbon is actually the top recommended spirit as if I wasn’t in with the wine.

We’re also hitting the farmers market a lot and eating lots of veggies and berries. I thought I’d miss bread a lot but I’m not missing it at all. When I did try some a few weeks ago it made me sick for hours. Scary to think you have to build a tolerance to digest bread and if you loose that it makes you feel terrible. I’m down 26 pounds and feeling great. I’m never hungry or feel like I’m giving something up and there’s no counting anything, you just eat when you’re hungry until you’re full and skip the grains and legumes. Our hikes are averaging 6-8 miles now instead of 4-5 and we’re feeling well prepared for harvest this year.

July 22, 2014

Comunidad Del Valle

This is a long video but I show up in the last third. Sabor Del Valle is an event we’ve done since it started and our favorite pouring event every year. I was happy to do the TV show. It aired last Sunday on NBC 11 in the Bay Area.