Our Anniversary Trip

We had such an amazing first anniversary! After much planning, we were unable to load all of the camping gear on the motorcycle so we decided to do day trips to Marin from our apartment for the first half of the trip & then we headed down south along the coast for the rest of the week.


Saturday afternoon, Dec. 22nd we headed south to the LaRoccas, where the dogs would be spending their vacation with Scott, Michelle, their three kids, their dog & two cats. After spending the night with them and saying goodbye to the girls we headed back towards SF along highway one.

We stopped in Santa Cruz for lunch (such a cute town) and saw the beautiful Natural bridges.



On the way home, we stopped at a lighthouse (one of many for the trip).

Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday we took day trips into Marin. It is SO gorgeous there! We can't believe it's just right over the bridge. We rode along highway one & the panoramic highway. We relaxed in cafes, had lattes and read our books. We saw tons of deer, cows & vultures.

The first morning we stopped in Sausalito and saw a man balancing rocks!

Here is the view of SF from the Marin Headlands:

The Panoramic Highway:

Love this sign:

Josh surprised me on a porch swing in the cute town of Olema with my anniversary present (a matching wedding band)!!
Out at the lighthouse in Point Reyes:


The roads around Muir Woods:

Alpine Lake:

I almost started a stampede:

One of the cute, little cafes we hung out at:

Deer were everywhere!

On Friday we headed down to San Luis Obispo and spent the night there. On Saturday we headed down to Pismo Beach, had some amazing crepes & went to see the Monarch butterfly colony.


At first we did not notice all of the butterflies & it took looking through the telescope (as pictured below) for us to realize that those brown leaves are butterflies!


Then we headed down to Santa Barbara, drove through the hills & hung out on State Street. The next morning we woke up and drove around Lake Casitas.


We spent the night in the cute town of Cambria & had a fabulous dinner at Robin's. The next morning we went to Hearst Castle. Hearst used to refer to it as his ranch (trust us, this was no ranch).

Here is his indoor pool with inlaid gold tiles:

We saw the elephant seals! Check out their trucks! There was a lot of talking & some fighting too!

There were also quite a few newborn pups:

We had a fabulous lunch at Ragged Point Inn in Big Sur:

Big Sur:

We stayed at this awesome resort, Marina Dunes, where you needed to drive around in a golf cart (every guest got one) to preserve the dunes. They upgraded us to a suite & gave us a bottle of wine. We had an amazing dinner at Casanova, breakfast in bed & hour long massages!