Columbus Day PreGame

In honor of Columbus Day I hope to achieve excellent levels of productivity, particularly directed at propelling my career. Of course the best way I to distract myself from doing so is by fueling my energy into a blog post.

I do have some weekend story telling to distribute, so it's not a total waste of time. This past weekend I tried my hand at the northern lands of California in Napa Valley. Though I foresee myself with a wine hangover for the next month, the trip was vastly successful.

The decision came as a last minute thought after hearing a good friend from the wintry fields of Upstate New York would be shipping overseas to Iraq on the 22nd. With no other 315'ers on the West Coast and a shared amount of time off (for very different reasons obviously) we ventured to a half-way meet-up point which just happen to work out to be America's wine country.

As an Ithaca grad I've delighted myself on my fair share of Finger Lakes "grape juice", but I jumped at the opportunity to flee the urban jungle of LA and see what the rest of this state has to offer.

Predictably, Napa is one expensive neighborhood. For travel and expense reasons we only dabbled in three wineries. Considering ourselves anything but wine experts, little difference was noticed and even less knowledge was gained from the trip.

 Luckily I did discover, with the help of an intriguing commercial and advisement of the hotel clerk, a dinner joint fully in tune with what I love. BBQ, classy girl right?

Gracie's BBQ in Vallejo had all the great aspects of a quality BBQ joint.  Though I would have enjoyed some less expensive options, the rib/link combo plater I order came out within ten minutes.  Can't beat that kind of timing.  We we're on a beer schedule so I didn't want to mix but they did offer some traditional "swamp juice" or flavored sweet tea in mason jars.

As for sides, I had some quality slaw and perfect cornbread.  My friend enjoyed the bread, mac salad, and we both skipped over the unfortunately bland red beans and rice. I noticed some homemade pies that I was temped to order but price and fullness put me at a standstill.   

I know the links don't really look pretty in the picture but trust, very delicious.  To give the menu a look see or if you're ever in the area: Gracie's BBQ

Happy Columbus Day.