Red Flag Warning

Our house is somewhere behind the hills in the middle distance in the picture. The vineyards climbing the foothills belong to Kunde Winery which offers a mountaintop tour. We've never done it but each time we drive by we say we should do it. 

We put the dogs in the car this morning and took them to the Sonoma Valley Regional Park. There is a leash law, but we can take them on the upper dirt trail and let Ozzie off the lead. There was a sign next to the trail warning us to stay on the paved trail because rattlesnakes had been seen in the area. I  don't think we met anybody up there this morning and Ozzie and Blake got a lot of sniffing done. Fortunately they didn't come across any snakes because we didn't see the sign until we were almost back to the car.

The drive through the Sonoma Valley is always beautiful but now that the grapes have been picked and the crush is almost over, it is fairly peaceful. It is really just a two lane country road but is often crowded with wine tasters, wine country tour limousines or grape trucks. 

The National Weather Service has just issued a Red Flag (fire ) Warning for these mountains which extend all the way from The Laguna de Santa Rosa into Napa county and the Carneros district, a distance of about 20 miles. It is almost a year since the fires, and although we had a fairly significant amount of rain earlier in the week, the weather is now eerily similar to what is was a year ago. One thing that is different this year is that there is a lot less to burn....

My neighbor, Cindy, just told me not to come banging on her door in the middle of the night again...I told her I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to. We won't have Dana to bang on our door because she and Jim are in Paris....