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.