Phillip and I are getting ready for our next adventure, a California road trip!! I am so excited to not plan this trip! That’s right I said NOT plan this trip. We are heading to parts unknown with no plans!
If you know anything about us then you know we love discovering new places. This is a trip we have been dreaming of for over 4 years, ever since we visited while my daughter was giving birth to our grandson. I used to live there when I was younger but Phillip had never been there and absolutely fell in love! We swore we would go back and now we are a week away from crossing one more thing off our bucket list.
California With No Plans
All we know for sure is we are landing in Los Angelas on Friday. We have to be back to catch a plane home the following Saturday. Hotel reservations? Uhm no! There aren’t any! We are going to just drive until we see somewhere we want to spend some time. We do know some places we’d like to see but we are not sure if we will make it to all of them!
That’s the beauty of this trip. Since we don’t have any plans we can end up just about anywhere as long as we make it back to Los Angelas by Saturday!
Places We Want to See
We are still debating on how we want to start the road trip. We don’t know if we want to head up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco or wind our way through the mountains and valleys towards Yosemite National Park. Those are three of the places we want to spend some time. We would also like to see the Sequoia National Park, Bodie, Death Valley, Lake Tahoe and even Reno, Nevada!! We have a lot we would like to be able to see. I know realistically we won’t be able to fully appreciate any of it if we plan it all out and rush through it to get to the next place. So we are going to see where California leads us!
The Pacific Coast Highway
We definitely are going to drive the Pacific Coast Highway! We are thinking we would like to drive it on the way back to Los Angelas so the coastline will be on our side of the road. There are so many beautiful places to see that we want to make sure we can see them! I would like to spend one night somewhere along the coast and watch the sunset at Pfeiffer Beach. There is a natural arch there called Keyhole where the last rays of daylight shine through. Wouldn’t that be amazing!! Of course, we want to see the famous Santa Monica Pier too!
San Francisco
We can’t go to California and not see San Francisco! Seriously!! There’s the Golden Gate Bridge, China Town, Alamo Square Park, and that really crooked road called Lombard Street. You could probably stay there the whole week but we have too many other places to go and things to see!
Yosemite National Park
This is the place that we are the most excited to see! I went there as a teenager. I don’t really remember a lot about it but I do remember being utterly amazed by the beauty. Phillip has never seen anything like this and I can’t wait to experience it with him! I know we will spend a whole day there if not the night too!
Bodie, California
What is Bodie you ask? It’s a ghost town! That’s right, a real wild west ghost town! This is going to be a stop along the way to somewhere else but we are really looking forward to seeing it! The weather is one of the things that attracted us to this unusual place. Supposedly the winds sweep across the valley at close to 100 miles per hour! Even throughout the summer, the nights are really cold often dropping well below freezing. Bodie rivals Barrow, Alaska as the locality in the United States with the most nights below freezing, in fact, no month has ever been completely frost-free! I guess we better take a jacket!!
To Drone or Not To Drone
Phillip is still on the fence when it comes to his drone. You can’t fly a drone in a National Park and most of the places we are going are. I think he should bring it and we will fly where we can and video where we can’t! I really want him to bring it because I know the video he gets from the drone will be amazing! You just can’t get the same thing from video on the ground. Either way, I will post some great videos and pictures of the places we go.
The Food
I just wanted to give you all a little heads up on what we are getting ready to do. You can look for my blog post detailing all the wonderful places in California that we do manage to make it to! The culture is so different there than here in Alabama. And the food!! Now that is going to be a real treat. I keep reading that you can eat whole food plant-based just about anywhere there. It is so popular that there is an app that tells you all the restaurants that are good to go to! I can’t wait to try some new dishes and get some new ideas on how to cook things. I promise I will get some new recipes to share with all of you!
In The Mean Time
Until I get back and post about our latest adventure to California you can read about some of our other getaways. I’ll post a link to them below.
The Ultimate Road Trip for the Empty Nester
Vacations ~ Our Family Tradition
Dunedin, Florida ~ A Different Kind of Vacation
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