Dreaming of California...

Missing California today...

so I made a little video from our trip last year.

Enjoy!*

Can we go back now?!

"Adventure is out there!"

I can't believe it's already been over a month since our Southern California vacation.  I was looking through my drafts of posts and realized I never finished blogging about it.  We had such a great little getaway and we're already dreaming about our next adventure.  But until then, some more California vacation photos will have to do... :)

 First day in California - Stopped at the Bruery for some tastings.

San Clemente is a great surf spot.

Brett surfed every day, all day.

And for being from Pennsylvania, he was damn good!

 I attempted surfing once...

but mostly just relaxed on the beach and took a billion pictures :)

 We are beer geeks (Brett made me that way).

So we made sure to go to Stone Brewery...

which was AWESOME (separate blog post coming for this place!)

Spent a looooot of time hanging out at the beach.

No plans, no worries, no work = heaven

 We stayed in the cutest little beach rental.
It had a grill & full kitchen, which we definitely took advantage of.

 Walking down to the pier...
San Clemente at night is beautiful.

View from out on the pier in the ocean.

 There was froyo...ohhh, there was froyo!

San Clemente... gorgeous when the sun comes out!

 One of my favorite days.
Exploring the coast of California...

 Overlook in Dana Point

We packed a little picnic and ate it right here.
We had the place to ourselves :)

 California is beautiful.

 I love him :)

 Strolling along the pier in San Clemente before dinner

 Happy hour on the pier in San Clemente!
Watching the sunset and all the surfers below us.

 Bagels & coffee from the Bagel Shack.
I still dream about this bagel, YUM.

 Headed into the desert and mountains for some exploring...
and I found Bigfoot!!

 Amazing views...

And sooo windy!

 :)

What a skyline...

 The desert was beautiful...
but so so hot.

Moments before Brett got completely attacked by a cactus...

 I am not a red meat kind of person...
but I'm pretty sure we ate In & Out burgers at least 3 times on this vacation
and they were DELICIOUS.

 Biking along the beach in Santa Monica on our last day of vacation.

 I like him a lot :)

 Oh, hiiii!

 Gorgeous sunset on the last day of vacation.

Studly husband :)

Bye bye California.
You were fun, as always!

Ahh, putting this post together makes me miss this trip so much.  One of my favorite things in the entire world is traveling and going on adventures with Brett.  Being able to explore and discover this big world together makes me so giddy.  I think no matter, throughout our lives together, we will always find ways and make time to travel.  And of course, we're already dreaming of our next exploration...

"Adventure is out there!"

Santa Monica Sunset

What is it about sunsets that give you such clarity?  I feel like when I'm standing there staring at this magnificent sight that everything just becomes clear in my mind.  Like there is a calm in the air and everything just makes sense in life.  Like all the answers are suddenly laid out so simply, right there, while staring at the colors go from blue to orange to pink.

On the last night of our California vacation, we witnessed this beautiful sunset.  It was the best sunset we saw during our whole trip, sitting there on the sands of Santa Monica.  It was beautiful.  The perfect moment to peacefully reflect on the great adventure we just had.  The perfect moment to dream about all our future adventures yet to come...

If It's the Beaches...

I can't believe it's already been almost 2 weeks since we were in California on our little west coast getaway.  We had such a great time running away together for 10 glorious days.  I finally uploaded and sorted through all of our photos we took.  Warning:  there are a lot.  :)  I decided to break up my California posts a bit.  This one is about... you guessed it, the beaches.

One of the main things we did on this vacation was explore some of the many unique California beaches.  We flew into LAX and were spending the week in a little beach rental in San Clemente.  We spent a lot of time just lounging (and Brett surfing) on the San Clemente beach, but we did get out a couple times to explore other beaches in the area.  

Heading out to the west coast, our flight into LAX landed at midnight... aka 3am east coast time.  We stayed in a hotel right near LAX because we were zonked.  So our first official day of vacation started the following day.  After the somewhat lacking continental breakfast at the hotel, we started making our way down to San Clemente.  Check in at our beach house wasn't until later in the afternoon, so we decided to check out some sights along the way, like Huntington Beach.  This beach was gigantic and gorgeous.  They even had a stand-up paddle board competition going on!

After killing some time walking around and sitting in the sand, we eventually made our way to San Clemente.  The San Clemente beaches were a lot smaller compared to Huntington Beach, but were still equally awesome.  The Amtrak train runs right along the coast down here and I've never seen anything like it.  I can imagine going on a long train right up or down the coast and just daydreaming out the window staring at the ocean the whole way.  Swoon.  Surprisingly, during our week long stay here in San Clemente, there was a weird fog that lingered around.  We got a couple days/hours of gorgeous blue skies, but there was quite a bit of overcast fog throughout the week.  But what did we care!  We were in California and not working and had no responsibilities for a week except to surf and eat as much Mexican food as humanly possible! 

Sometime mid week, we decided to take a day time adventure and check out some other beaches near by.  These places were amazing.  First, we stopped at the Dana Point Marina and took a little hike along the water to secret caves that pirates supposedly used to hide their treasures in.  And apparently, some treasure has yet to be found!  (I am such a sucker for tales like this...).  We also took it to higher ground to check out an awesome view of the marina from above.  We stopped at Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point for a little lunch picnic we packed.  It was so neat to watch the waves crashing against the awesome rocks here.   

After our lunch at Salt Creek, we made our way to Laguna Beach, specifically to go to Table Rock Beach.  We had to climb down these old wooden stairs to get to this little gem and it was breathtaking.  It was this little secret beach scrunched up and hidden below some amazing cliffs.  The water looked extra turquoise here.  It was beautiful.  

On the last day of our vacation, we were scheduled to fly out of LAX early early in the morning.  So instead of spending our final night in San Clemente, we opted for a hotel room near the airport.  The day before we flew back to Pittsburgh, we said goodbye to our cute little beach rental and the San Clemente beaches and made our way to LA.  We decided to spend the day in Santa Monica.  It was such a gorgeous sunny day.  Blue skies!  We rented bicycles and rode up and down the beach.  We also witnessed the best sunset of the entire trip here in Santa Monica.  It was beautiful.  And the perfect end to a fantastic beach getaway.

Ahh, I miss these views already.  The west coast and east coast have such different scenery.  I love the east coast, but it's so nice to be able to get a taste of a different view every once in a while.  California beaches, we love you.

(More California posts coming soon!)