My Favorite Time of the Year is not Christmas

 Just kidding, of COURSE Christmas is my favorite! My SECOND favorite is September 6th, our anniversary.

On our very first anniversary, I wanted to do something really special and our of the ordinary for us. So I surprised Jon with a giant road trip that spanned the Californian coastline, from Trinidad to San Fransisco. I had it all planned out, from the maps and directions to/from every stop, to having a hotel booked for every town we landed in at night, in advance. We spent four days in a two-seater convertible, with our two small dogs on our laps, and sometimes at our feet. We slept in smelly, shady, (but dog-friendly!) Motel 6s every night. We survived out of a tiny blue cooler shoved behind my seat, and ate the cheese, crackers, and salami that we had bought the morning we left. It lasted nearly the entire trip! We saw 14 Northern Californian lighthouses (in various working order), 3 small-town museums, 2 Blue Whales from a boat in Monterey Bay, and drove through 1 Giant Sequoia tree. Among countless other weird and crazy adventures, including stumbling upon a road-side Spanish-only circus.

CLICK HERE to see more pictures from the lighthouse trip!

We planned out second anniversary together. Our Lighthouse trip was so fun, we wanted to do it again, but this time see the Southern half. Well, the further south in California you go, the more populated it becomes. Long story short, there arent enough lighthouses in working order to make it road-trip worthy for us. So back to the Northern we went! We drove through countless adorable small towns the previous year, but one stole both of our hearts: Ferndale. Imagine driving for hours on a heavily wooded 2-lane highway. You drive up and up and up! Youre the only car on the road, and its quiet. Its foggy, and the air that whips your hair in the open-top car smells like the sea. The car turns a corner, and suddenly you are transported back in time to the Victorian era, and the building that loom from the clouds are statuesque. Youve made it to Ferndale! We stayed in the Shaw House B&B for a glorious four days! The town is so small and quaint, not one place is open past 4pm and the only shower in your room is a claw-foot tub. It was magical. Oh! And Ferndale is on the Lost Coast, so we managed to see one last lighthouse.

CLICK HERE to see more pictures from the Ferndale trip!

For us, every anniversary is really special, and we love to celebrate our lives together, in a way that is meaningful to us both. We want to spend our lives creating stories and memories that we will never forget. So because our third anniversary is coming up this September 6th, we started to think about how we wanted to celebrate. We are in a pretty cool country already, and could easily spend it here, and could legitimately stay in arguably the coolest B&B ever (its in a real castle, no joke). But nah. We're going to Paris, baby!