This brings us to part three of our multi-part series on what I've been up to this summer. As you can tell from the above photo, the weather has been mostly awesome. We've had a bunch of people coming through the area (including Jim, KJ, and Meghan's mom). Above you see Meghan and I with our friend KJ. She was out here in June and we had a ton of fun. We went and did some wine tastings in Woodinville. We were all pretty tipsy by about 11:30 a.m. on a random Thursday, which makes for very easy livin'. The wineries were nothing special, but we still had a great time.
We started at Columbia Winery, which wasn't terribly exciting. We ended up pulling in right behind a tour bus full of octogenarians, which always makes for some interesting people watching. But even with all the old folks, the wine was pretty awful. So we made it disappear and headed off to the next stop: Chateau Ste. Michelle, which was very pretty, but had even worse wine than Columbia. It was only made worse by the worst. wine. tour. ever. You know that smell that emerges from the floorboards of fraternities and package stores when beer and wine spill, but nobody cleans it up? Well, that's your first impression as you enter the bottling area: stinky cheap wine spilled on the floor. All three of us were nauseous within two minutes and ready to leave. Unfortunately there are no exits and the tour drones on for about 30 minutes. I won't even get started on the tour guide, but Ben Stein would have been an improvement. When we saw the exit we made a break for it and escaped just in time to see the tour bus from Columbia pulling into the parking lot. So needless to say, by the time we arrived at our third stop, our expectations were pretty low. But, it turns out Silver Lake has some damn tasty wine. Not to mention that the woman behind the bar had a liberal pour and let us taste about 20 different wines (for those of you not good with reading between the lines: this is where "tipsy" turned into "drunk"). We ended up buying half a case of wine. I was very impressed with their zinfandel and their merlot. If you're in the hood, stop by and pick up a bottle or three. You won't regret it.
On Friday, we headed down to Mt. Rainier where I got the worst sunburn of my life and eventually ended up in the Emergency Room at 1:00 a.m on a Monday morning in pure agony, but that is a story for another day and is probably best told by Meghan who had to put up with my whining and whimpering during the whole ordeal (You'll also notice that the trip to the mountain was on Friday, the trip to the ER was on Monday. Stupid sensitive skin Dove). But anyway, I digress. We had an awesome time at the mountain. It was 80 degrees and we were hiking through 10 feet of snow in shorts. We probably took close to 200 pictures, got an up-close look at a glacier from almost 6,000 feet, and ate a few pounds of trail mix. It was awesome.
During the course of the weekend we probably took about 500 pictures, 50 of which turned out pretty good. I'd love to share them with you, but there is this little problem. I don't know where to upload them. But fear not. I, Austin Dienst, Internet frontiersman, have decided to answer, quite possibly, the single most important question since the dawning of said Internet:
I searched high and low (mostly high) to try and find a side-by-side comparison of the various options available, but I found nothing. Nobody to help guide me and my discretionary dollars to a photo service. So, being the self-starter that I am, I decided to find out for myself. I signed up for an account at Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, and Snapfish, plus I turned on the "Order Prints" option from my Flickr account. I uploaded the same six photos to each site and had them shipped to me. I am now impatiently awaiting their delivery so I can share the findings with you and start uploading the huge stash of photos burning a hole in my hard drive. Stay tuned.
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