Road Trip 2018 - Day 27, Fatigued In Fayetteville

And on the 27th day even Captain Spouse was ready to drop.

Our plan had been to spend a day driving through the Ozark Mountains taking advantage of the fall colors for (what the State tour guide for motorcyclists called) 'drop dead gorgeous' and 'spectacular' scenery.

Unfortunately when we woke up it was raining and the forecast was for the rain and gloom to continue all day.

Unfortunately when we woke we both realized that we were at the end of our rope energy and physical resilience and really did not have the energy to do 153 miles (the trail we were going to follow) of mountain driving.

Now there are certain people who follow this blog and know the Captain and her faithful Engineer, Scottie (DE-I damn it!) and might bring up the subject of 'repetitive behavior patterns', 'not learning from past experiences' and 'acting ones age'. Your comments are duly noted and accepted for consideration...as they have been after every other one of the Eldership's voyages. We have a special place for them and have scheduled a time to give them our full attention. That time unfortunately keeps being pushed out. Captain and I will be sure to notify you when Eldership Command schedules the preliminary hearings.

But I digress. So here we were in our lovely Airbnb in the outskirts of Fayetteville, Arkansas (Home of the Fayetteville High Bulldogs, Go Dogs!) and the University of Arkansas (Home of the Razorbacks, Go Hogs!) with not much to do. Serendipity, our ever present companion in travel, stepped in. Our Airbnb host had mentioned the previous night if we had time they had a winery just a mile and half away. At the time I didn't think we would have time with the long drive planned but with now time to kill we went on over.

Then I remembered that there was a Rotary club meeting a lunch on Thursday so we decided to go to that as well.

The winery (Sassfras Springs Winery) was a totally pleasant surprise. 

It is a family venture. The parents are the owners and funding source. Two brothers and one daughter-in-law are the management. While they are serious about wine making, the primary revenue generator is being a wedding and events venue.

Here is our contact Drew

It would be hard to find a more enthusiastic and articulate spokesperson for the venture

Here is his brother (sorry forgot his name), who is the wine maker. Not the best picture but he was very busy at working

There were all kinds of neat spaces designed for weekend events to gather and have wine and food

And a lot of attention was paid to decorative details. I found them bright, colorful but not over the top. They all seemed to fit it. LOL by the way, Drew DID NOT pay me to promote his venue. I just was impressed by what I saw

 Some examples of design detail

We tasted the wines

They are still in the process of planting out their own vineyards so most of what they produce is with unpressed fruit purchased in California

The grapes they are growing are all new varieties being developed by the University of Arkansas that will work in their climate

I liked what we tasted

Those who know de-I's opinion of a lot of US non-traditional production will know that is significant compliment

There is a tongue in cheek aspect to the venue that I found hilarious

This is the main venue for wedding ceremonies

It is called (I think) The Ruins Chapel

I thought

"This is cool. Someone has traveled around enough that they understood what ruins look like and figured out a way to incorporate that look without being too hokey"

Here are some shots of what Drew called 'the smallest wine production facility in existence'

Finally the area where the post ceremony celebrations are held

This was converted from a large stable

Keeping with the 'tongue in cheek' motif they made use of a stall door in the men's room!

We then went to the Rotary Club of Fayetteville. A large club but nowhere near as large as the one in Little Rock. We didn't even send a notice we were coming, just dropped in. We felt very welcome. We did the whole exchange of flags thing which was cool. I was asked to do a couple of minutes on who are club was so mentioned that we are female majority club and that because so many of us are retired we do most of our service in the form of actual hours worked at various venues. Evidently that is a very rare model and it seemed to impress a number. There was a speaker from the University, a woman professor of Political Science who talked about the trends of woman involvement in the political process. Very interesting. I think Captain Spouse and I are getting more and more warmed up about using the Rotary connection to expand our experiences as we travel.

The rain had ended by the time we had finished with Rotary so we decided to give part of the drive a chance. But we were too tired and we cut it off and went back.  I ended up taking a 45 minute nap!

Tomorrow we are headed to Guthrie Oklahoma where Captain Spouse has a cousin we will be having lunch with.