Santa Cruz Island Kayaking with Channel Islands Outfitters

Living in California, it's easy to take for granted all of the amazing scenery and activities there are locally. Off of the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are a series of channel islands that make up the California Channel Islands National Park. We look at them every time we drive up the coast, and we'd toured near them on some whale watching trips, but we'd never been out to visit them!

SD came to visit California for work a few weeks ago, and we decided to do something we've been wanting to do for a long time - take a ferry out to the Channel Islands and have an adventure!

Heading out for our adventure!

Travel Photo Tuesday: Huntington Library, Pasadena CA

Another one of my favorite Los Angeles spots is the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena, CA. The grounds are really magnificent! They have gardens structured from around the world - the photo above is from the Japanese garden, which is probably my favorite one. They have many different halls of artwork, a tea room as well as a few more casual places to grab a bite to eat, and a lovely museum shop as well!

Travel Photo Tuesday: Angel's Flight in Downtown Los Angeles

Angel's Flight is a unique piece of Los Angeles history! It originally opened in 1901 as a way for the wealthy residents of Bunker Hill to make it down into downtown Los Angeles, and then it was refurbished and reopened from 2010 to 2013, then was closed to investigate safety issues, which are still ongoing. It's unfortunately not running today, but you can check in and see if it's up and running again by following the Angel's Flight Railway page!

Travel Photo Tuesday: Brooklyn Bridge

One of my absolute favorite places in New York is the Brooklyn Bridge. There's just something about it - the light posts, the wooden planks, it's just really neat. I took the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn, then walked back to Manhattan. The skyline views were awesome, and you could even see the Statue of Liberty in the distance!

Travel blog fail.

Well, it seems that I've done an absolutely terrible job in the last year and a half with blogging about my travels!

It started with a sort of lackluster trip to London in October 2012, and then I just, well, I don't know, I guess we just got busy with life. In addition to being crazy busy at work, I also got engaged and married! Meaning that from here on, "BF" will now be called "Hubby... :-) 

But! I'm back to make a renewed effort to bring this travel blog up to date.

Here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to in the last 20 months or so:

October 2012: Trip to London

February 2013: Monterey weekend
March 2013: Long weekend in New York
April 2013: Work trip to Las Vegas
June 2013: Road trip to Arizona
September 2013: Work trip to Atlanta, paired with an overnight in Savannah thrown in
October 2013: Work trip to Cannes, paired with a week in London, Bruges and Paris

February 2014: Work trip to New York
March 2014: Bachelorette weekend in Palm Springs
April 2014: Work trip to Las Vegas
May 2014: HONEYMOON in the Cook Islands
June 2014: Work trip to Miami, then a quick weekend in Arizona
July 2014: Work trip to New York

Whew! Seems like I've been up to much more travel than I thought! I also have a couple of additional trips coming up this year, which I'm pretty excited about.

August 2014: Quick two night trip to Portland for a baby shower, plus an additional work trip to New York
October 2014: Work trip to Cannes with a few nights in London on the way over
November 2014: Work trip to Atlanta

I'll come back to this post and link some things once I've blogged about them! Here's hoping I can get up to speed soon....

Monterey getaway!

BF's birthday is coming up, and I knew back in December that I wanted to do a quick but awesome getaway with him for it. It's been a while since we've been to Monterey, CA, so I thought that'd be the perfect place! 

*Image from Google Maps*

And now the trip is coming up later this month, and I've finally booked a hotel! We'll be staying at the Best Western Plus Beach Resort Monterey. (Yeah. It's quite the mouthful, right?) A friend of mine stayed there with her hubby and pup over the holidays, and she said it was great. And since it's a Best Western, the prices are some of the most reasonable I've ever seen in the area. It's a little outside of Monterey, but I think we'll survive. I mean, we'll be ON THE BEACH! AND it's dog friendly? I may have found my new favorite hotel! 

I'll be back towards the end of the month with a review of it, but to say I'm excited is a bit of an understatement. Now, to find some dog parks we can stop at on the drive up...

What weekend getaways are you planning for this year?

New Year's Resolution

It's a little late, but I finally came up with a New Year's resolution... drumroll, please...

Make 2013 the year of day/weekend trips!

There are a ton of places that I want to go that are close by or fairly local. And I've been severely neglecting taking advantage of the awesome travel available in the US!

Here's my plan so far:

1) January: Day trip to Santa Barbara and Solvang with X while she was visiting from NY. - DONE!

2) February: Two night getaway to Monterey, CA with BF for his birthday. - BOOKED

3) March: Three night trip to NY with M! (She's going again for work, I'm going again for fun!) - BOOKED
     March: Overnight to Indio for a concert with Shorty and DK. - BOOKED

4) April: Two night trip to Vegas for a work conference. (I'm trying to get BF or M to come with!) - BOOKED

5) May: Potential return to NY for work. - PLANNED

6) June: Overnight in San Diego to visit BF's family.  - PLANNED

And right there, we're halfway through the year! Here's hoping it all works out!  

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Mount Rushmore & Custer National Park

The morning of our last full day of our trip we headed out early so we could see as much as we could of Mount Rushmore and Custer National Parks. And, since we didn't take all of the traditional routes for this leg of the trip, I'm going to talk about the highways we took, too, in case anyone is interested in our route!

We headed south on 385  from Deadwood through Hill City to get to the monument, because my stepdad has family in Hill City, and we wanted to check out the Black Hills Institute museum. We didn't end up making it to the museum, because we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to see everything else, but if I had more time, I'd definitely stop in! And if I had kids, I wouldn't dream of missing it - they have a T-rex skeleton!

 A kid fishing in one of the picturesque lakes along the drive.

Wild Wild (Mid)West: South Dakota and the Black Hills

On day 4 of our trip we got a rather late start, as we'd been up late at the Sheridan WYO Rodeo and Street Dance. But we made it onto the road by 1pm, and drove pretty much straight to South Dakota, with a short detour to see Devil's Tower, WY. 

Devil's Tower from the road. 

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Driving across northern Wyoming

Once we had dismounted our horses, we took our sore rumps to the car for the longest day of driving of the trip - the exit of Yellowstone to almost clear across Wyoming to Sheridan, WY. And we had a schedule - we had a rodeo to go to!

The drive from east Yellowstone to Cody, WY was one of the prettiest parts of our trip. President Teddy Roosevelt called the drive the most scenic in America, and it definitely lived up to the hype. 

On the road to Cody, WY

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Horseback riding at Pahaska Tepee Lodge

One of the best parts of our trip out west was the morning we did a two hour horseback ride through Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. We started out at 9:30am and headed up a trail that took us up to 10,000 feet. The employees at the stables were really nice, even though there had been a miscommunication about what time we were starting the ride. 

Our horses: Weatherby, Bear Claw, Blimpy, and Rapid

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Yellowstone

Visiting Yellowstone was incredible. Pretty much everywhere you looked was amazing! My biggest regret from our trip was that we didn't have more time to spend there... I'll definitely be returning someday, and will spend a lot more time! We got a decent taste of the park, but there were so many hikes and sights we missed!

Nearly there!

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Montana Grizzly Encounter

The Montana Grizzly Encounter was absolutely awesome. After we got lost outside of Bozeman, we didn't have a ton of time, but wanted to do something cool and "Montana-y." And the Grizzly Encounter totally fit the bill!

It was an easy drive outside of Bozeman - only about 10 minutes on 191/90 East. It cost $7/person to get in, and you could spend as much or as little time as you wanted watching the bears. I think we stayed a little over an hour, which was plenty of time to check out the grizzlies! 

The two bears that were in the enclosure were Sheena and Brutus. Sheena is a 26 year old female who was born in captivity and through some random circumstances ended up spending 13 years of her life in a 6'x4' cage until she was rescued by the organization. She only tolerates Brutus, so no other bears are allowed out while she's out. She also doesn't let humans touch her. Brutus, on the other hand, is a 10 year old male who stands at 7'9" tall. He was raised with human interaction, and sometimes works on movie sets!

Sheena meandering to the water and Brutus sniffing some wildflowers.

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Bozeman, Montana

Finally, I'm getting around to writing about our trip to Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota!

We started the day off super early, as the only direct flight from LA to Bozeman the day we flew was at 8am. As per our habit when flying out of LAX, we left early enough to hit Randy's Donuts on the way - it's the best donut place in LA, hands down. Yeah, that's right, I said it. 

 The coconut donuts from Randy's Donuts are the best EVER!

The First 70

I'm back from our amazing road trip to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore! It was a great trip which I'll go all sorts of into soon, but at the moment, I wanted to bring up another topic.

The state of California is in a budget crisis, as many are, but on the list of cuts are the closing of 70 state parks across the state. A group of filmmakers went on a 120 day tour of these parks and created The First 70, a documentary to highlight the beauty of the parks scheduled to close. 

   

As a California native, this topic bums me out - there is so much to see and do in our state and it breaks my heart to know that these parks are closing! In addition, one of my favorite parks, Limekiln State Park, has already closed. Limekiln is a simply stunning park - it's on the Big Sur coast and has a campground with spaces in the redwoods and on the beach, and miles and miles of amazing hiking trails and historic sites. There are waterfalls, lime kilns  where mined limestone was quarried for many buildings in San Francisco to be built. It's also a favorite vacation spot for my mom and me, and it's going to be sorely missed by us.

Check out the documentary, make a donation if you're so inclined, and check out images from the incredible parks that are scheduled to close. Visit the Save Our State Parks website for more action items, or check out the list of closures to see if your favorite state park is in danger. And for more information on each park, check out State Park Closure Trip blog, a blog run by another woman visiting all of the parks slated for closure.

Wild Wild (Mid)West - Montana, Wyoming & South Dakota Road Trip

Even though I technically live west of Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota, the upcoming road trip we have planned there reminds me of the "wild wild west."

M and I were taking a drive a few months ago and decided we wanted to take a road trip. But not just any road trip - a road trip to somewhere 1) we'd never been, and 2) that was completely different than California or the East Coast. Then we remembered we'd never seen some of the great "American" sights like Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore (which both scream road trip, no?) and voilà, a trip was born. 

I meant to write about our itinerary ages ago when we actually booked the trip, but stuff (like my real job) got in the way, and now it's right around the corner! SO. Here's a rundown of what we're going to be doing!

DAY 1 – BOZEMAN, MT

 

New York: Dylan's Candy Bar

Dylan's Candy Bar.

Where do I start? 

This place is quite possibly the best candy store I've been to in my life! Three floors of deliciousness, and so much variety you barely know where to start! By the bulk, by the bar, by the chunk, it was a wonderland of childhood dreams. 

Let's go by floor, shall we? 

The entry level floor was like a Sweet Factory on crack. Cases and cases of candy - sour candy, chocolate candy, chewy candy. The best part? You could buy gummy bears BY. THE. FLAVOR. Yep, that's correct. I got an entire bag of pineapple gummy bears, and enjoyed every single one of them.

Color wheel of chocolate - each color was a different flavor! I ended up grabbing a pack of bars to bring back as souvenirs! 

New York: By Night!

Since M spent a good portion of the trip working, we did a lot of our wandering and sightseeing at night. Which actually worked out really well for us, because New York by night is really awesome. For some reason, most nights we ended up eating dinner on the Upper East side, so we walked back down to Chelsea to our hotel more than once, and got lots of chances to check out the sights by night!

FAO Schwarz!  Kind of bummed we were never there when it was open to check out all the toys!

New York: Central Park

I knew from the moment I booked my trip that I would be spending an extensive amount of time in Central Park. I had a huge list of things I wanted to see there, and actually made it to most of them! 

I made two rounds around Central Park on my trip - one with X after a Sunday brunch, and one with M when she was finally off work on Monday... and both trips were awesome and different. 

Strawberry Fields and the John Lennon Imagine mosaic - it was ridiculously crowded and took me a good 5 minutes to get a shot of just the mosaic without any weirdo tourists sitting on it. Why do you need a photo WITH the mosaic??

New York: The Sights!

Admittedly, I had a very ambitious list of things I wanted to see while in New York last month. While I didn't manage to do EVERYTHING, I think I covered a good amount of stuff, plus some extras that were unexpected! 

I was in New York for 5 days - Thursday through Monday. The first two days, I spent the majority of in my office, then meeting up with M when she finished work. We went sightseeing at night - it was a really cool perspective of the city.