Northern California

Ahhh, California. You’re a gem. (If driving down the highway here doesn’t prompt you to play either Phantom Planet’s California or Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten, I don’t know if we can be friends.)

Jer and I both feel the same about California, so we were really excited to spend some time here. If you remember, I’d come out with a friend of mine back in February, and Jeremy was jealous, so he had to make up for lost time.

And make up for lost time we did! We started in Northern California, in San Francisco. I’d never been before and man, was the bridge just as pretty in person.

After San Fran, we hit Napa and Sonoma. It’s truly heartbreaking to read about the wildfires that have destroyed so much of that area. Being from the east coast, we don’t deal with wildfires, so they are particularly scary in my mind.

Interestingly, we decided to also check out Sacramento. I’d never cared about Sacramento, much preferring LA, but we found a great house we wanted to stay in, and thought it couldn’t hurt to check out the capitol city.

The house was just great in person, and I loved Capitol Park. The had the most wonderful orange trees lining the paths and both a huge rose garden and a cacti garden.

If you guys have been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know I LOVE a good garden.

Also, if you ever find yourself in Sacramento, go check out Osaka-Ya for snowcones. You can even get mochi inside the snowcone! These are size extra small too!

During our time here, we also made it out to Lake Tahoe. It reminded me quite a bit of Colorado, and was the perfect time of year to go. The water was a bit chilly, but nothing a pup and two brave humans couldn’t handle!

After weeks of stomping around Northern California, it was time to head south. And there’s really no better way to head south in Cali than via the Pacific Coast Highway. Much of the PCH is still closed around Big Sur from landslides, but that certainly didn’t take away from how stunning the coastline was.