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After a night at Lucia Lodge, we ate a quick continental breakfast and packed up the car – it was time for more Pacific Coast Highway road trip! We lasted about 30 minutes buckled in before having to pull over to soak it all in {again} and snap more pictures. I could have stared at this bridge for hours.

And even though I’m not one to sit still, everything about breathing in the ocean air, watching brightly colored flowers dance in the breeze, and hearing the salty Pacific rush to the shore, made stillness comfortable.

And the scale! At barely 5′-3″, feeling small is a usual feeling for me. But as I looked at the rocks beyond and my feet below, I felt an insignificance that felt… good. My surrounds were gigantic, larger than life, older than, well, dirt. Panic over missing an email? Aren’t I too small to worry about such a thing?

We hopped back in the car and headed to {if you can believe it} an even more breathtaking sight. Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park was seriously magical. Waterfalls are kind of magical on their own, but combined with the most crystal blue water {ever}, massive cliffs, sandy beach, forest trees, palm trees – it was like all of the most stunning features of nature were plopped unfairly into one place!

This is the first time I’m sharing these photos and, already, I’ve had family and friends asking how soon I’d be ready to do it again. The answer is that I’m ready now! But fall is just full. It’s festival season in Austin {ACL & FFF!!}, mom/daughter Paris trip in October, and Christmas in Florida – another Pacific Coast Highway trip is going to have to wait until 2016.

For as long as Ariel has lived in Los Angeles, she’s wanted us to tack a Big Sur road trip on to one of my visits. But because a five-ish hour journey {in addition to a flight} seemed like craziness, it continued to be something we only dreamt about. That was until I was invited to tour a vineyard in Carmel Valley with a plus one. Naturally my West Coast bestie would be my date. And a vineyard adventure a few towns over from Big Sur was the perfect opportunity for us to realize our road trip dream.

Knowing food choices would be scarce in the mountains, we stopped at a Whole Foods in Santa Barbara to stock up on picnic fare. Wine, cheese, salami, and berries – our picnic meal was going to be better than anything even the best of restaurants could offer.

We arrived at our destination, Lucia Lodge, to find that we hit the visual jackpot. The lodge, ten of the quaintest cottages set as close to a Pacific cliff as one could imagine, was beyond adorable. And as we took in panoramic views of mountains, cliffs, ocean, and forest, we instantly felt the feeling of vacation.

We walked our cooler down a curvy trail, lined with flowering succulents, to a wrought iron table and chairs we would claim as our own for the evening. We laid out our spread, unscrewed our bottle of wine {how about that for planning head!}, and cheers-ed our wine-filled plastic cups. Dozens of pictures later, we sat down to eat, drink, be merry, and post on social media, only to find.. we were without internet.

After a few minutes of shock about how we could be in the most Instagrammable spot of our lifetimes and not be able to Instagram, we laughed, joked about being both #blessed, but truly fortunate, and took it all in.

Almost as soon as our giggling settled, we heard a noise that was reminiscent of frat boys “woo-ing”. “What is that, a whale?”, I asked jokingly. “Um yeah, it could totally be whales”, Ariel replied. She ran over to the picket fence to find that the noise was, in fact, coming from wales. Lots of wales {at least five}! And we spent the remainder of our wifi-less evening, whale watching and silly-picture-taking.

Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip

Big Sur Vacation