A Splendid Saturday

Last Saturday was a day of coupons and deals.  We started out our day by driving almost an hour up to St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, where we would be touring a winery and vineyard called Chateau St. Croix .  I had purchased a gift certificate on one of the daily coupon sites back in the summer and wanted to go to take the tour in the fall when the leaves changed.  We got busy and didn't make the trip a priority.  Almost a month ago, I tried calling for same day reservations and they were booked all day and also for the following Saturday so we decided to do it on our anniversary weekend, hoping the weather would still be nice, which it was.  The gift certificate included a winery tour, a cheese and cracker tray and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to take home.  Our tour started at 11:30 am and we were supposed to be there 15 minutes early, and we would have if it wasn't for stupid Google Maps taking us to a random area where no winery existed.  We had to call for directions.  Once we were there, we were still able to go on the 11:30 am tour.  I believe that people getting lost happens frequently as there were multiple people who were late that also claimed to have gotten lost.

The tour wasn't too much of a tour.  I guess I wasn't sure what to have expected but it was done in what seemed like 20 minutes, which actually turned out to be a good thing.  One of the things I learned was that it takes a certain number of years for the vines to become mature enough to use the grapes to make wine. I believe they started with the grapes in 2003 and this past September was the first year they were going to harvest them and use them, however because of a late frost, it wiped out their whole crop so they will hope for next year. The cheese and cracker tray was nothing special, although they did have a ginger and mango cheese that was kind of interesting.  We were also given 5 wooden coins that allowed us to taste 5 different wines. If you live in Wisconsin or Minnesota, you may know two of their wines.  The Wisconsin one is Cheesehead White, which has a small cheesehead as a topper in honor of the Packers and then there's Helga's Red, which has a helmet with horns on the top in honor of the Vikings. We had a fun time at the vineyard but probably would have enjoyed it more if it had been a month or two earlier.

I'm thinking about purchasing this wine vest for M for Christmas.  Looking good! 

We stopped at the overlook on Main Street right in town, which you can see the power plant and dam on the St. Croix River.  Nothing too exciting.

We stopped in Marine on St. Croix to have a quick chocolate fix at the St. Croix Chocolate Company.  We found out that on our fourth visit there, they've only been open since June and they say that business is better than expected.  We each got two chocolates which again is probably the best chocolate I've ever had.  But it's not cheap...$2 a piece.

We headed further back south to Stillwater where M had to go to Brine's for their famous Bloody Mary.  He prefers non-alcoholic bloody's so that's what he chugged down in about five minutes and then we were back on the road to use another coupon.  

Being that we'd already had some wine, a couple pieces of chocolate and a bloody, it was time to eat some food.  We stopped at Dari-ette is St. Paul to eat.  Again, this was a coupon that I had purchased on a coupon site in the summer which on that day if you used your Visa card to make the purchase, you got another gift certificate for free.  We had already gone one time and we had to go again as they close November 12th for the season.  

We came back home and took a nap.  When we woke up, we went to Marcus Theatre in Oakdale to see a movie.  I thought it would be perfect because even though it was Saturday night, it was the night before Halloween so many kids and adults would be at Halloween parties or doing some sort of Halloween activity which means that it would not be uber busy, which turned out to be true. Because it is the 75th anniversary of well, something, the price was $7.50 and each person got a popcorn and pop for free. We saw Hereafter.  It's a movie directed by Clint Eastwood that has Matt Damon in it.  I would say he stars in the film, however there was plenty of time he wasn't even in the movie.  The movie started out very intense and had you on edge but after five minutes, it leveled off and somewhat dragged on to the point where we wondered how everything was going to come together in such a short period of time towards the end.  If you haven't seen it and wondered about it, you're better off waiting for it to come out on DVD. 

Another great day with M!