Sidewalk sales and wine tasting on a bright sunny day

With temperatures finally flirting with the 60s here and the sun completely out we expanded our plans from going to a sidewalk sale in a nearby city to a trip to a nearby winery.

In the middle we had what can only be described as an OnStar adventure, one of the few errors we have experienced with that service.

First stop was to Havana, Florida, which is about 12 miles north of us on US 27, the same road our campground is on. Joan spotted a television ad for the 2-day sidewalk sales in the town and suggested we go check it out.

It is a cute little town, one of those one stoplight cities, that you see in rural areas. Much of the downtown is made up of antique stores and specialty shops and we enjoyed looking through all the stores.

Joan was very impressed with the layout of the stores and how attractive the antique wares were presented. For me, it was just shopping and that's not my favorite thing to do.

After a three hour stay we bought one small gift for one of our granddaughters and Joan picked up a couple doo-dads for herself. I just got a case of the glazed over too-much-shopping look.

Following that we punched up OnStar and asked them to give us directions to the Monticello Vineyard and Winery in Monticello, Florida. I had looked briefly at a map before we left and the directions sounded close to what I remembered from the map.

The Winery is also a certified organic farm and so no chemicals or additives are used in the processing of the wine.

Once off I-10, the main east-west freeway through the Panhandle I immediately began to get nervous that we were headed in the wrong direction for the winery. But, OnStar has rarely let us down so I pressed on. That is until they told us we had reached our destination and we were in the middle of nowhere.

So I called them up again and after a few minutes the OnStar advisor apologized and said the previous advisor had sent us to Waukeenah Road, instead of Waukeenah Highway, which as it turned out was about 15-mile error.

Armed with new directions we made our way to the winery and arrived at 3:35 p.m. The vintner met us in the driveway and promptly discovered we were not the people she had been expecting. In fact, we didn't call ahead just took a chance someone would be there. So she started the tour with us and continued on as the others arrived.

I noticed a tall good-looking young man holding his 6-month old daughter at the tasting. He was wearing a U.S. Marines hat with the name "Okinawa" on it. So I asked him if he had been stationed there and he had.

My ship once made a brief stop on the island of Okinawa so we struck up a conversation and I learned he was a Marine Corps pilot, an officer, and was currently a flight instructor at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, which is our destination next week.

We swapped war stories and I thanked him for his service. Later we gave the couple a fresh bottle of water which they needed to dilute the baby's formula. He offered to pay for the bottle and I told him there was no way he was going to pay for that water. (For my father: He formerly flew the C-130)

We learned a lot about the type of grape that grows in Florida and the kind of wine that can be made from it.

Monticello Vineyard and Winery is one of only 15 wineries in Florida and we have now visited three of them, with three or four more on the itinerary in Pensacola next week.

Joan, as she always does, found a couple wines she couldn't live without and as is our custom we purchased an extra bottle for the Family Literacy Center auction.

After our winery visit we headed downtown to Monticello so I could take a picture of the beautiful, historic courthouse that is also the logo on the label of the Monticello wine.

Tonight we enjoyed Part II of our KFC dinner from last night.