California Trip

Our California trip was great. It was so good to get to spend some time together before life gets crazy with graduation, the move to TN and the little one. We have been calling it our last vacation for awhile.

There are many memories and moments that I would love to share, but that would make this blog way too long. So, I will try and stick to the highlights. I have included several pictures, but to view all of our pictures from this trip just click here.

We arrived about 5pm after a flight that seems to take forever. I learned that it is not fun to fly while pregnant! Our first adventure was fitting 2 suitcases and Ty's golf clubs into a convertible rental car. I thought we might have to ditch the convertible for a bigger car, but Ty made it work. We had the golf clubs sticking up in the back seat with the top down to do it... but he made it work. Over the course of the trip, Ty got really good at taking all of the luggage out, putting the top up or down, and then putting all of the luggage back in since there was one specific configuration that worked with the top up and one specific configuration the worked with the top down. This was due to the fact that the top had to fit in the trunk when it was down. But, overall we loved having the convertible.
Next stop... Northern California to see the redwoods.

We got to see my cousin Patrick at school at Humbolt Univ on our way to the redwoods. It was great to spend some time with him. Then we were off to drive and walk through the redwoods. It was amazing. I have never seen trees so big! It was Ty's favorite part of the trip. We both commented that it felt like we were walking around in a children's storybook. I have attached one picture below, but it is hard to do it justice with a camera.


After the redwoods we were off to drive on highway 1 on our way to our hotel in Pacific Grove, CA. We did stop a couple times along the way to take pictures. This is one of my favorite stops we took on the way to Pacific Grove. Ty is pictured below running from a 'Sneaker Wave' on the beach. No worries... he did make it, even though it looks close :)


By about 6:30pm we arrived at the hotel. Our room was on the 3rd floor (no elevator) and Ty had to carry all of our luggage up to our room by himself! He moved all of our luggage quite often up and down stairs, in and out of buses at the airport, etc. and never complained once. I even tried to carry a suitcase onto one of the airport shuttle buses once and he stopped me. He was a rockstar!
We loved our room. It had windows on 3 sides and we often kept the windows open. The best part was being able to listen to the ocean waves crash on the rocks from our room. There is no better sound to fall asleep listening to. Here is a picture from our first morning in the hotel.

The rest of week we were able to fit in a lot of activities. We went to the aquarium, walked on the boardwalk along the ocean, and Ty even got to play golf one morning (I was happy to take that opportunity to sleep in!). My favorite thing from the trip was all of the animals that we were able to see in their natural habitat. We saw otters, seals, sea lions, lizards, lots of birds, deer, Elk, etc. There was a cool moment on our walk to Fishermen's Warf that we saw some sea lions under the peir by the Coast Guard's dock. We were able to sneak in for a bit and get really close to the sea lions and take some pictures before a member of the coast guard kicked us out. It was pretty neat.

We took one afternoon and drove up to Big Sur and saw more seals. The way there and back, we were able to enjoy highway 1 a bit more. I have posted one of my favorite photos from that drive. It was beautiful. I am just glad that I don't get car sick easy... there were some windy roads!

One of our favorite things to do is to watch a sunset and we were able to see a couple on this trip. Here is a self timer picture from one of the nights.

It was an incredible trip. There are still so many stories that I didn't have time or room to share. But, hopefully we will get to see you all and tell you some stories in person soon! If you want to see more pictures (there are some good ones that are not posted) just click here.