Labor Day of Rest - Day of Travel

Our family spent the weekend tooling around the house, relaxing, and just enjoying ourselves. Just the way anyone should spend a long weekend.

Today, however, we decided to go for a ride to parts unexplored. As we wandered down windy roads, we saw hilly California scrub brush, magpies, and what seemed to be hundreds of horses as we drove along. We finally came upon the Purple Orchid Inn. It's a resort and spa a little ways out in the winery and ranchland of Livermore.

We stopped because Kandy had heard about it from her friends, and we both wanted to investigate. It is beautifully landscaped and the main building is quite nicly decorated. The doors are both carved and painted - very much as art pieces. Here is Katie and Megan in front of the side door(if you click on the picture - you can make out Meg's braces! As a matter of fact, if you click on any of the pictures, you'll see them in full size). The sky of the picture is a beautiful leaded blue glass. The rest of the scene is carved and painted. From the inside, the carving looks like a black shadow. We asked if we could come in and look around. So I snapped a few more pictures...

There was a display of porcelin boxes and I was able to capture Katie's reflections as she was looking at the porcelin pretties. It was fun little ride that we enjoyed since it was close to home, yet we could have been anywhere in California and have seen just about everything we saw today. What a lovely way to end the long weekend.