Last week, the Dart-Clark-Benz family got together to celebrate Thanksgiving in Napa California. Christi and Charlie live just a few hours away in Sacramento, and Jenny and I are only a day's drive away in Seattle, so it seemed like a pretty convenient location for everyone to meet at. The Chicago crew flew in, and rented a beautiful house which served as our home base for the week. The house had several acres of planted grapes (which were as delicious as they were beautiful). We got some great sunset photos there, as well as our annual family photos. It's always amazing to see how much each the kids change from year to year. It's hard to believe that Hannah will be two in just a few weeks!

While in Napa, we did some wine tasting, but mostly just relaxed. An unexpected surprise for me was the fact that the house had a large tree/bush that was a hummingbird magnet! I've never really had the opportunity to photograph hummingbirds in the wild, but I had plenty of opportunities on this trip. Hummingbirds are fascinating to watch, and frustrating to photograph! They move too quickly and unpredictably, I found that the best strategy was to stake out a location, and not to try to follow an individual bird. Luckily, I had brought my 70-200 f/2.8 with me, and the Mark III performed beautifully. It's almost as if the high speed shooting mode was designed to catch these little suckers!

It's about a 10-hour drive from Seattle to Napa. We drove down the 'quick' way on I-5, pretty much a straight shot, with an overnight stop in Redding, CA. On the way back, we wanted to explore a little more, so we took the scenic route home. If we had a bit more time, we would have liked to stop in San Francisco to see the Golden Gate bridge (maybe next time). Instead, we made our way over to the coast by way of Hwy 101, and stayed on 101 all the way through California and Oregon until our final stopover in Cannon Beach, OR. Along the way, we saw a spectacular sunset in Trinidad CA, had a foggy hike through the sand dunes of southern Oregon. Near Yachats, we saw the Sea Lions (the free ones on the rocks in the ocean, not the rip-off ones in the stupid cave). We stopped at the Heceta Head Lighthouse, but opted to skip the hike this time. Our last stop on the trip was at Cannon Beach. The weather was beautiful!