Showing posts with label california. Show all posts
Showing posts with label california. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Road Trip: The Beautiful California Coast


I know you've all been waiting to hear about the actual road trip part of our trip. Well here is, as promised, part 2.
We left San Diego and made our way to Santa Barbara. We had grand ideas of taking US 1 all the way up, but when we realized that meant it was going to take 6 hours as opposed to the 2.5 we had planned on, we went back to the shorter route. Some day I will drive that stretch of US 1, but we hadn't budgeted 6 hours of time to do it.
The architecture in Santa Barbara was beyond gorgeous. It was a beautiful day to just walk up and down the Main Street and soak in the sights. That was pretty much all we could afford to do! Santa Barbara is not a cheap town. However, in honor of one of our favorite shows, psych, we did go find the police station. We stopped at the beach for a bit, but then we had to hit the road again because the hotel we were staying at was an hour and a half away.
The view from where we ate lunch in Santa Barbara
Pysch! Alas, we could not find a pineaplle to include in the picture
The next day, we woke up really early to start driving up US 1. This day was amazing . The views were gorgeous everywhere! We couldn't get enough of how beautiful everything was! I don't think words can describe this part of the trip so I'm going to just let the beautiful pictures taken by Elizabeth speak for themselves. (these are probably not in order but I tried to at least arrange them by place)
The photographer with the beautiful scenery
One of our stops was the Hearst Castle. What a gorgeous place!
First views of Hearst Castle!
Hearst Castle
Me at one of the many beautiful views from the castle
Elizabeth with the castle
Me with a view of the castle
After the castle, we went to view some elephant seals!
Just chilling

And then we just stopped many many places along the way









By the end of the day, we were exhausted and just ready to crash. However, I felt so inspired by the beauty we had soaked in all day. It was definitely my favorite day by far of the entire trip.
The next day we spent in Carmel by the Sea. What a cute little town! We took the somewhat hard to follow walking tour, and happened upon a gallery showing prints of Dr. Seuss' art. It was cool because there were a lot of pieces I hadn't seen before that he hadn't done for children's books. And I found a couple of books that I want to save up to get!
We stopped at the beach for a while because it was supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the USA. Well, it definitely was! I could have been perfectly happy sitting there all day, but we got hungry. We spent some time at the mission there which was definitely an interesting piece of our country's history. Then we found a cool state park and took a hike!
Again the day would be better served by showing you pictures so here they are:
Elizabeth in a really cool tree right by the beach
The beautiful beach at Carmel by the Sea
Us at the beautiful beach
And some views from our hike that we took in Point Lobos State Park:




This was probably my second most favorite day.

Then...off to San Francisco! Which you will hear all about in my next California post. Now it is time to stop procrastinating and get to work on my art challenge!

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Road Trip Part 1: San Diego!

Hello again!
It's time to tell you all a bit more about my trip! After the wedding, we decided to stay for a few days in San Diego so we could see the sights there. The first day, we went to Balboa Park. What a beautiful park! Balboa Park is where the zoo and a lot of museums are in San Diego.
First, we went to the art museum. Every time my sister and I travel to a new city, I drag her along to the art museum. (She likes museums too, but I do limit myself to 2 hours in a museum so she doesn’t get bored out of her mind!). The museum was nice. I think it was a bit overpriced for it’s size, but I am a Jersey girl and spoiled by the MET.  It was pretty small, you wouldn’t need two hours to see the entire museum. Granted, we only ever look at the exhibits we are interested in, and that didn’t take long.  There was an exhibit of Joaquin Sorolla’s paintings and drawings that I really liked. He was an artist I hadn’t heard of before, so it was worth going just to be introduced to some new art that inspired me. He drew on location in gouache, and his drawings of New York were amazing. He really managed to capture the busy bustle of it with just a few loose strokes. I loved them, but of course, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibit and they didn’t have any postcards of the art I liked. His paintings were beautiful too.

Me! In front of the art museum
 After that exhibit though, we were done at the museum and made our way across the park to hear the organ concert. That was a lot of fun. They literally have a giant organ in the park, and at 2 o’clock on Sundays they have a concert! We sat there for a bit, but really you could hear it from anywhere in the park. I wanted to draw because everyone was using umbrella’s to keep off the sun, and it looked really funny!
The organ. It was so cool!
A quick sketch of the organ concert.
We did go to the Japanese Tea Garden, The Model Railroad museum, and the Botanical Building, but really the park in and of itself would have been fun to just go hang out in.

The Botanical Building. The Buildings were so cool!
The next day we went to the zoo. My sister loves pandas, so our first stop was the panda exhibit. They were both asleep! I love red pandas though, and they were awake. They were also super fun to watch! We decided to come back to the pandas so that Elizabeth could see them awake.
It’s a nice zoo, but a little confusing to navigate. We were trying to see the tiger, and all we could find were monkeys! However, we did eventually find the tiger, and it was asleep. It was really hot that day, so a lot of the animals were either asleep, or not in their enclosures. I did get to see a lot of koalas though! They were all asleep too, but at least they were in trees so we got to see them. When we went back to see the pandas, they were awake and moving around so that was good. My favorite was still seeing the red pandas actually awake, and seeing koalas for the first time.
It was a beautiful zoo, but again, I do still like the zoo in Washington D.C. ! (I guess you just can’t get the east coast out of me).
Some gorgeous shots by Elizabeth: (All the photos in this post were taken by my sister Elizabeth, unless they are drawings or she is in them. I will be using many of these for reference for drawings, and they are beautiful, so I figured I would share them so you could all enjoy them too!):

Elizabeth going to see the pandas! In her panda shirt, of course
I love red pandas!
My drawing of the red panda in the travel journal we kept
Pandas! Elizabeth had so many pictures of the pandas it was hard to choose one!
a cute little monkey
sleepy koala
One of the many elephants
Me and a new friend ;) 
The next day we started our road trip. Which you will hear about in another post!
It’s time for me to get back to work on some art projects that have been neglected since I’ve been away.

Look for some new posts again soon!