sand and sun

When you go into a shoot totally unprepared for the weather and conditions, but it somehow manages to all work out. We drove a few hours to the sand dunes east of San Diego, dipping in and out of Mexico's cell service, and weren't quite ready for the intense heat and whipping sand. Real talk: I had 1+ meltdowns and had to take a few breaks in the car with the AC on in between outfit changes. But when the hot sun finally gave way, it was a whole new kind of sunset - soft, pretty, and seeming to go on forever over the smooth, sandy hills. We drove the long way home covered in grit, sunburns just beginning to show, happy to have seen the sun set somewhere new. 

shoes: Ridgemont Outfitters

shirts: Hello Apparel

campground morning

My love for camp coffee is no secret. There's something so gratifying about performing the same morning ritual you do every day outdoors, in the peaceful morning where it feels like you're the only one in the world awake. I usually wake before Evan and move as quietly as possible, lighting the stove and breathing in the cool morning air while I wait for the water to boil. This particular morning was the first time the sun broke through after a rainy few days of camping, so the way the sun rays hit the morning mist was especially enchanting. We made breakfast together, cracking eggs and sizzling bacon, and made plans for a day of hiking and exploring. This kind of morning will always make camping so very worth it. 

glasses: proof eyewear

from the passenger's seat

when you're a terrible driver and the type to get a bit stir-crazy in the city, the passenger's seat is the best place for you to be. 

winter drives

It's really far too late to be sharing photos from Christmas, but I thought that if I at least blogged these before the first day of spring (next week), they could still count. We (somewhat foolishly) decided to drive to snowy Idaho and back so we could see both of our families for the holidays, which amounted to several hours of tense, somewhat terrifying long stretches of driving icy freeways in the dark. But it was so worth it to see so many family members and spend the week in glorious, beautiful snow. The magic of snow is just never quite lost, and it was soothing to our LA-based souls. Our next return to the pacific northwest is in a few months, and I'm already finding myself lost in daydreams of Seattle in the spring! 

cowboy coffee

My mom calls it cowboy coffee, and it's one of my favorite parts of camping. We'd taken the rain cover off of the tent the night before, so on this morning I was woken by the most beautiful pink-gold clouds moving quickly across the mountain valley. We'd wanted to get to the lake by sunrise, but the sky's dance coming through the open tent was too entrancing to move. I watched for a few minutes before crawling out of the tent to light the stove and put cool water on to boil. When the bubbles surfaced and Evan had stumbled out with sleepy eyes, we poured our coffee and walked to the lake in quiet gratefulness of what nature was offering us. It was the most peaceful and content time I could remember in so long. It's time to get back into the woods again.