Winter Road Trip - Northern California

My boyfriend and I moved from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles in June of 2013, and we have been missing the Northern California wilderness. We decided to take a two-week vacation over the holidays to visit his family in Mill Valley and to spend New Year's in Yosemite with one of our best friends and her parents. I took the opportunity to practice photography; I learned in college on a Pentax K1000 film camera, and I am trying to master digital photography with my boyfriend's Canon Rebel XS.

The first trail we hiked on our trip was Coyote Ridge in Mill Valley.

We followed up with a walk along the boardwalk through Richardson Bay, where I admired the diversity of wildlife. 

We then drove to Yosemite to spend a few days over the New Year's holiday with our friend and her parents in a rented Yosemite West condo. We stopped on the way to visit with my brother and our podcast co-host in Manteca.

After Yosemite, we returned our friend home to Santa Cruz - I drove and it had so much fun. I love curvy mountain roads. We then traveled back to Mill Valley for a few more days and one incredible hike with my boyfriend's brother to Alamere Falls, one of the few tidefalls in the world.

When I went back to work for my final week before graduate school, my co-workers noted that I had been "revitalized." I think this was in response to me dropping the f-bomb every few sentences and making at least one crude reference to inter-generational love-making. Anyway, I think they're mostly right. This trip made me feel great, and I am so looking forward to my next road trip; perhaps Yellowstone?