carmel

some pictures from our trip

for tanner's 27th birthday, my present to him was a weekend to carmel, california. he lived there for about a year 1/2 and always said great things about it so it was fun to go down memory lane with him.  

we drove up to santa barbara friday night to sleep. in the morning we got ready, i fed eli one last time, and then tanner and i jumped in the prius to head up to carmel. eli stayed in santa barbara for his first time without mom for more than a couple hours. after about 4 hours we arrived in carmel and i was blown away by its beauty. many of the houses looked like they came straight out of fairy tale books / look like they belong in italy's countryside. 

our main activity on saturday was going to the beach (which was only two blocks from our hotel). we took a lot of pictures, dipped our feet in the water, and made perfect timing to watch the sunset. the pebble beach golf course looked over our beach, so we hiked up to the course to watch the sunset. so perfect! i couldn't get over how beautifully pleasant it was. that night we got dressed up to go out to dinner and walk around. we bought little treats from tanner's favorite candy shop and ate them by the fireplace in our room for dessert.

after eating breakfast sunday morning, we started our drive back. we stopped at point lobos which is an amazing national park that was only miles away. we then drove through big sir, which is another national park. we took the pch all the way down and though it was amazing scenery with the ocean always in view, the curvy roads and 25 mph got old pretty quickly. on our way down we also found a beach with hundreds of elephant seals camped out on the sand. it was interesting to see them all there and was great to stretch our legs, but we got back in the car to make the rest of our trek back to santa barbara to see our boy. 

we had such a great time and it was definitely a fun getaway. happy birthday tanner!

this was taken on tanner's actual birthday while out to dinner with kristen and ryan (the weekend before we went). i made him a newsletter explaining what we would do, weather, things to pack, etc. so this is him holding it up after reading it.