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.

Campsite 48

We almost postponed our annual anniversary camping trip a few weeks because so many California campgrounds were full, closed for the season, shut down due to plague, or under extreme fire/drought restrictions. The thought of camping without a fire just made me sad and I was getting pretty bummed about it all when Evan found a campground near Yosemite with one spot left. We grabbed it and a week later, we were pulling into the loveliest little campground!

It was mostly full of fishermen and hunters staying for a few weeks with their campers & pup companions, so it was quiet and clean. In the mornings we walked to the lake with our coffee and at night we slept (fairly) soundly with our tent open to the stars and full moon above. The campground and lake were situated in a little valley, so we had beautiful mountain views on all sides and watching the moon rise above the cliffs each night was sort of magical.

We were both a little drained after a h-o-t summer in the city with little traveling, so I can't tell you how much this peaceful respite soothed our souls. This is my very favorite of our traditions.

West Coast Blues

The indisputable beauty of the central California coast, and Big Sur specifically, just doesn't get old. The first time we drove down highway 1, I was worried the real thing wouldn't live up to all the photos I'd seen - so very wrong. The second time, I wondered if it wouldn't strike me as deeply because we'd taken it all in before - again, very wrong. There's something about the pure, deep blues of the west coast that resonate somewhere within the soul, something quite pure and untouched. 

Sorry, East Coast. There's just nothing you can do.