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!)