I see those ‘deals’ in my email almost everyday and one came up for Sand Castle Winery in Erwinna, PA. I happen to love trips up to Bucks County as it’s about 60-75 miles one way, so not too bad for us, so we decided to go yesterday, the 17th. My first wine tasting!

We went a little early and looked for a few geocaches as we had a little time to kill. The one stop was near a movie complex and a vehicle with shaded windows was parked parallel to us. We got out and started to look around some blue spruces and down came the tinted window and we think it was a policeman as he had a computer in front with him. We explained caching and he seemed fine with it. We looked a little more and then he left! Being distracted made us want to move on, so we found one in a wooded area behind the same movie complex. We found another in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and then one near the Garden of Reflection, a beautifully designed area for the 9-11 victims, 17 of which were from Bucks County, including one of the pilots of the planes.

We got to drive most of the way up and down River Road which runs along the scenic Delaware River.

When we got to the top of the road where the winery was, we saw this:

It’s such a lovely view and perfect for growing wine grapes because the way the wind blows most of the time and being near a river. I think there are 73 acres of a variety of grapes. They are harvested between August and October.

We saw the big vats of wine

 Opps-a bit dark, but you get the picture.

The wine tasting was interesting. As I have never done that before, and we started to serve ourselves as the man who runs the tours was running around a lot (at one time there were only 4 guests there). He came back and said that was his job. He needed to tell us about what we were drinking (though we had a paper in front of us), but he gave us chocolates and wasabi peas to try with the wine. We tried 12 different ones and bought 4 (one for a gift).

Up on the balcony after the tasting and crackers, meat and cheese.

You can see the castle design of the winery behind Brian.

Afterwards, we decided to go see the 9-11 memorial over in Yardley, PA.

It was about 20 miles away from the winery and again we traveled most of the way down River Road.

Stopped and took a few shots too.

So here’s where we paid our respects to the victims of that horrible day that changed America forever.

This was a 3-sided board where you could leave a message. Since it was just the 12th anniversary, there were not many blank spots. Many messages had faded, but I did find a tiny spot.

RIP-Collins family with a cross

This is part of one of the World Trade Centers supports. We both touched it-you just felt like you had to.

The Garden of Reflection 9-11 Memorial was created to remember and honor our loved ones and all 2,973 killed on September 11, 2001. It is situated in Memorial Park amid the natural beauty of Historical Bucks County farmland in Lower Makefield Township.

The Memorial designed by Yardley architect Liuba Lashchyk AIA

Twin fountains to represent the towers

And the etched panels with the names of all the victims-nearly three thousand. Too. many. names.

I wanted to find the young lady whose name happen to be in a photo I took at the memorial in New York City. I have read about Vanessa and learned about her. The day Bin Laden got killed, her mom said an angel she had fell over and both wings broke off.

The garden was designed to look impressive at night also. The designer added 43 lights around the trees, etc. to represent the children who lost a parent that day.

We saw that there was a geocache here also. With the last percentage of my battery’s phone we had to figure out new coords my adding and subtracting numbers from the listed coords. We had to walk away from the memorial garden toward a community garden. The area where the cache was finally found was covered with sticky vines. Brian grabbed a stick and went in for it and found it (not found for 2 months). I didn’t bring my geobag with me, as I didn’t think my phone would last to grab the cache.

We left and headed to Peddler’s Village for a quick bite. We weren’t hungry from the crackers and cheese from a few hours earlier. All the stores were closed at 6!

We got to see a few of the scarecrows in a contest they have and this one cracked us up!

You don’t see a pretzel used for a scarecrow unless you live near Philadelphia!

We had a varied day and are glad we went.