Don’t get me wrong… I love Oregon and I love Portland… but I’m pretty sure my favorite place in the country is Northern California. That very special coastline between Big Sur and the Oregon border, containing such cities as Monterey, San Francisco, and Crescent City, is a photographer’s dream. It’s also a dream for anyone who appreciates amazing food, fun people, eclectic architecture, and great weather.

Leaving Oregon, we started our California Adventure around the beautiful spot of Klamath. It’s the area where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, but it’s most well known for the Red Woods. The tallest trees on earth. Thriving off of dirt, fungus, and fog… they rise to 200+ feet tall and create dense groves of incomprehensibly large trees. We spent several days hiking the numerous trails around the area. Lady Bird Johnson Grove and Fern Canyon, are probably the most famous.

From the Redwoods, we made our way south to Eureka, Mendocino, and into Santa Rosa. We have some very good friends in Santa Rosa who were gracious enough to host us. We’ve been making a Santa Rosa pilgrimage for the past several years, and we have accepted that healthy decisions are just not possible. Our friends are too good of chefs, know too many good restaurants, and belong to too many awesome wine clubs, that we now know to just embrace the consequences of eating and drinking so many amazing things. Oh darn. Luckily, they also took us hiking along the coast and walking around their super cute neighborhood, so we could pretend we were making healthy choices. A new thing we did on this trip was take the 10 mile hike to Tomales Point on Point Reyes. Didn’t realize that there were so many elk on this little strip of land… but we definitely kept running into them… and coyotes!

Leaving Santa Rosa, we headed into my favorite city… San Francisco. Between previous road trips, my work as a pilot, and having friends in the area, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit SF quite a bit, and I love everything about it. The colors, the houses, the food, the bars, and the people make it a thriving and engaging city. Of course, the fog and cooler weather only adds to my love of this city. My wife hasn’t really been to San Francisco, so it was fun showing her around the Castro, Golden Gate Bridge, Grandview Park, and Nob Hill. On a geeky note, we tried one of those driverless taxis, and it was pretty freaking cool… creepy… but freaking cool.

Heading further south, we spent quite a bit of time in Monterey and Big Sur. This is truly the most spectacular coast line in the country. The jagged cliffs, the fog, the light, the sea rocks… it’s all incredibly stunning. Because we stayed in Monterey, we got to explore the aquarium, cannery row, and saw more sea lions than I have ever seen before. Our pup sure seemed to like his seaward brethren.

As I said, this area is a photographer's dream. As always, thank you Northern California.

photographing fog on the northern california coast

driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog