Hooray for Harvest Hosts

 This week we tried out two more Harvest Host locations: Vista Ranch and Cellars in Merced and Agua Dulce Winery in the Santa Clarita Mountains.

Harvest Hosts are farms, wineries, or museums that allow RVers to stay overnight on their grounds, generally for free, mostly all they want in return is for us to participate in whatever they're doing.  So far the three we've stayed with are all wineries, so the activity of the day is therefore wine tasting, buying snacks, and hanging out with the winery folks telling stories.  All are things we love to do so this is really working out for us.  At first glance staying at a Harvest Host location appeals to Lance's cheapskate nature, but in fact we find that we generally spend the same or more drinking and eating than we would spend on a comparable campsite and an evening's activity, which also works out just fine with me.

Settled in for the night at the Vista Ranch and Cellars in Merced

Occasionally there are power or water hookups, but mostly the parking is primitive dirt lots.  We have really been appreciating a little elbow room and an escape from the structure of a formal campground as sometimes it means there's a little room for Chloe to run.  At Vista Ranch and Cellars she made friends with their barn cat and was actually a little sad when we pulled away, whining at the window until she couldn't see her new friend any more.

As it turns out, our cousins are wine club members at Agua Dulce, and they were close enough and had some time to hang out.  Their dinner selection for the night: Le Chene which is a meaningful venue for them and was a tasty surprise for us.  The menu arrived on a chalk board, it's so fresh they don't even bother printing it on paper.

Sipping wine on the gazebo patio at Agua Dulce

Lance has been driving the bus this week, I'll take my turn starting tomorrow.  Tonight: wine, dine, and early to bed.