Back on the Road

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

And so after my trip to Chimney Rock, I was back on the road. This time heading home. I headed out of Napa Valley and into the Central Valley where it was 109, I realized that I was going to have to keep driving until the temperature dropped enough to NOT cook my wine.

That meant that I drove until 10pm when the temperature finally dropped to 80 degrees. How far did I get? Winnemucca, Nevada, where I stayed at one of the skeeviest Motel 6 I have ever seen. I checked in through the kind of Plexiglas that I usually associate with a Harold’s Chicken Shack (ironically Plexiglas and chicken don’t bother me, as I can understand why you would want to kill people to get a white half floating in hot sauce).

Anywho (as my late Grandmother would say), I was back on the road. Determined this time to stop at wineries on the way. I knew from the trip out that I had pretty much exhausted opportunities in Utah, so I concentrated on making good time. And the funny thing is that I can make EXCELLENT time in a land with a speed limit of 75 miles per hour. Finally in Nebraska, I stopped in Sidney as it was I place that I knew that I would be able to find wi-fi if not wine and started looking for wineries that would be along the highway and had tasting rooms. I created a list of four wineries located across Nebraska:

Southfork Vineyard
845 Road East D
Ogallala, NE

Feather River Winery
6152 SE State Farm Road
North Platte, NE

Deer Springs Winery
16255 Adams
Lincoln, NE

Soaring Wings
17111 S. 138th Street
Springfield, NE

And so I plugged in the first address and off I went… to the middle of Ogallala into the parking lot of the A&P. Another GPS FAIL. After a bit of jiggering with the directions and trying desparately to get an internet connection on my phone (it was in paperweight mode), I tried again entering in a new address. And hoped for the best.

This entry was posted on September 9, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under Gretchen Neuman, Win(e)ding Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.