Yakima

We made an overnight trip to Yakima this weekend with some local Seattle friends! In retrospect, Yakima was about 2 hour drive from Seattle, a day trip is doable if you have designated drivers. It was also the Spring Barrel Festival, but honestly we did not notice an overwhelming amount of travelers. The day turned out to be gorgeous and we were able to make it to 4 different wineries. We began at Wilridge Winery, where we did a 5 wine tasting for $5 and then had a great picnic lunch on the winery grounds.

 

After Wilridge, we went to the opening of Naches Heights Winery down the road. I personally liked this winery the best. They have a great outdoor area and the wines were quite tasteful, again 5 for $5.

 

Our last two winery stops were within downtown Yakima, they both did not have any outdoor seating so I recommend going there later in the day. Maximize time at the first two wineries when its warm and sunny. If you enjoy sparkling wines, Treveri is a must stop. If you bring your own glass, the wine tasting was only $5, but I am not sure if it was only for this particular weekend. Our last stop was Kana Winery, this place was okay, the only tasteful wine was the dark star, and they gave very small samples of wine. The website we ended up using to plan out our tour was: http://wineyakimavalley.org/. Very user friendly and provided a great layout of locations and different wineries in the valley region.

Our accommodations for the evening were at the Ledgestone Hotel, a great hotel for a real bargain, I would recommend it to all. Each unit had a kitchen with microwave/stove, fridge and sink. We ended up sharing 1 double bed room with a pullout couch. Saturday evening dinner was at Russillo’s Pizzeria, a place that isn’t to die for, but hits the spot after a day of drinking, we shared a 24″ pizza amongst the 6 of us! Make a reservation ahead of time, good thing we did as it was Prom night in Yakima. There were not a whole lot of restaurant choices, especially vegetarian friendly, but if all else fails, there was an Olive Garden. We had Sunday brunch at Backwoods Cafe, now this place was somewhere we would not likely go back but the service was impeccable.