We decided to end our trip to California with a visit to wine country. For our first visit we chose the smaller Sonoma Valley over Napa. Sonoma was a relaxing and enjoyable way to end our nearly two weeks in northern California. We walked around the plaza and explored the most northern mission in…
Category: Travel
Santa Cruz
After spending the day before in Monterey and the day in Big Sur, we decided to try another coastal city. Santa Cruz was intriguing because of the surf and skate culture. Our initial thoughts were of a west coast Myrtle Beach when arriving at the boardwalk. Since we were there, we saw a sky ride…
Big Sur
After several days of hiking around the wilderness of northern California we drove over to Big Sur to enjoy the famous the scenery. Big Sur lived up the hype but felt a bit overcrowded when driving down route 1, granted we were visiting just after July 4th. Some of the highlights of our day at…
Monterey
After a few days in the desert and mountains of California, we headed back to the coast. The 6 hour drive from Lone Pine to Monterey gave us the opportunity to see new parts of California, such as glimpses of Salinas Valley the “salad bowl of the world” and the largest mission in California in…
Mt Whitney
After visiting the lowest elevation in the United States and the location of the hottest verified temperature on Earth we decided to drive just over 100 miles west to the highest elevation in the contiguous US. The plan was to sleep in Lone Pine around 3700 feet above sea level, wake up at 300 am,…
Death Valley 2013
Having never been to any sort of desert, we decided to incorporate Death Valley into our northern California trip. Our brief visit luckily (in our opinion) coincided with the hot season nearly falling on the centennial anniversary of the hottest recorded temperature in the world (June 10, 1913 – 134 F). While driving around the park…
Yosemite July 2013
After two excellent days in San Francisco we headed inland to the mountains. Being new visitors to California we did not expect either the number or demand for permits required to enjoy the outdoors. When we first started planning the vacation we quickly realized permits for Yosemite’s iconic Half Dome and Mt Whitney are pretty…
San Francisco July 2013
We finally made it to northern California! Two weeks after returning home we are already thinking about our next visit. Thanks to Peter and Carolyn for not only putting us up but showing us around the city. On our first visit we visited some of the more popular destinations, sites such as Lombard Street, the…
New Orleans – Spring Break 2013
For Easter 2013 we took a long weekend over Kate’s spring break and headed down to New Orleans. We saw some great music, ate some delicious food, and enjoyed a large part of the city. We also found a wonderful bed and breakfast (Magnolia Mansion) in the Garden District. The area was quiet and the…
Skiing and Montreal Canada
After a handful of ski/snowbaord trips to the southern Appalachians we decided to check out something a bit larger in New England. On Christmas Eve we headed up to Gore MT in the Adirondacks. While conditions were fair the lack of lines all day was amazing. This was Kate’s first visit to a more respected…
emma jean jones 