So lets rewind and catch up on the last several days- A lot has happened!

If you have been keeping up with our blog you will know that our car was stolen the first night we stayed in Oakland.  Apparently this happens a lot!  Howerver, a lot has happened before that, and after that, which has been nothing short of amazing.

Before we left Santa Cruz, Our buddy Jeff took us to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It is the biggest Aquarium in the U.S. and one of the biggest in the world, according to Jeff.   In their biggest aquarium they have massive tunas, sun fish, hammerheads, giant sea bass, birds, and sea otters.  

Image

 

This Jelly fish was taller than I was, and was majestic and mysterious.  Nobody really can explain how a jelly fish’s body works.  It has no brain, no heart, no nervous system, etc.  Look it up!  It will blow your mind!  

So after staying another night in Santa Cruz with Jeff we were off to Big Sur.  We were not going to go because it was backtracking south, but a lot of people told us it was the best place we could go.  They were not kidding!  Words can not do this place Justice!  So I am going to post a lot of pictures instead.  Keep in mind that we were driving in at sunset and only got a few pictures off before dark.  Then It started raining that night and did not stop until after we had left.  

The landscape kept getting prettier and prettier the farther south we drove towards Big Sur until we got to this Gem.

 

Image

 

And then here was the next corner…

Image

Seriously, around every corner was a breathtaking view!  As the sun set Danielle got some good ones of the sun hitting the water!

Image

 

Image

 

 

 

 

 

So then after the sun had set, but there was still a little bit of light left, we drove down into a valley filled with Redwood forest where our campsite was located.  These were the biggest Trees we have ever seen by far.  They were hundreds of feet tall and some where ten feet wide!ImageImage

 

Look at the little picnic table!

Image

 

Image

Image

Image

 

Image

Our residence for the evening was at Fernwood.  They called it an adventure tent!  Thats exactly what it was!  It had electricity, a queen bed, and a wood stove.  It was a little nippy, so I stuffed the stove full of wood and fired it up.  It warmed up very quickly!  At first it felt great, but not for long!  The inferno in the stove heated the tent to sauna like conditions! It must have been 120 or more degrees!  At first we got naked- but soon we realized that we were going to have to evacuate the adventure tent.  So we got dressed and walked down to the river that surged next to our camp site.  After about an hour we returned to the tent and the temperature had dropped to about 95 and was mellowing quick.  We hit the sack.

Image

The next morning we awoke to pretty hard rain.  After packing the car up in the down pour we decided to drive down the coastline anyway.  It was pretty discouraging because we could not see anything!  At one point we were on an 800 foot cliff but could only see down about 100 feet.  

Image

 

We ended up pulling into the Julia Pfifer state park, which we knew was one of the best spots.  Danielle didn’t want to get out of the car and get even wetter.  We had surf racks on the car and water was leaking in through the straps.  We had towels on hand to soak up the water.  Despite the uncomfortable conditions, and partly because the rain let up a lot, we decided to hike down to the cliff and check out the sights.  It was the best decision we ever made!

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

Image

 

We have some many great pictures, and I could not post them all.  Simply put- It is the most beautiful place we have ever seen!  Lets see how Yosemite compares!

I love my life, I love my wife, I am so grateful to be able to take in all of this beauty.  I am astonished at all of the beauty that the world has to offer!  I thank God for all of this! Danielle will catch you guys up on the rest soon!

End of our Vegan Fast and our car got stolen on our cross country trip home

Hi Everyone! This is going to be a short blog posting. Travis and I had our car stolen a few days ago, from Oakland, CA. To make the long story short, over $15,000 of our things were in the car (we are moving back home to VA).   My violin, all of my jewelry, all of our winter clothes, all of the shoes we own (except the sneakers we had on our feet) and so on and so forth. You can only imagine how stressful it has been. Thank goodness we have a great insurance company and we are hoping to get back the money’s worth of things stolen from us. They found the car, but everything was out of it. Come to find out, a crack-addict stole it and sold everything for crack. Then he smoked the crack in the car and also peed all over everything. Violated doesn’t even begin to express how we feel. We feel very blessed to have our health, each other, and our loving family to go home to, but it has been stressful. God has a reason for all of this and we realize that. Counting our blessings is one of the top priorities on our list everyday.

Yesterday was the last day of our 30 day Vegan fast and I must say, WE FEEL GREAT! I have committed to not eating dairy again and also no meat at all, except maybe an occasional fish here and there (like a few times a month). I feel the best I have ever felt! Vegan food is by far the most tastiest food in the world. As far as Travis goes, he is not making any promises he says, but he won’t eat dairy, meat (other than seafood), and we plan to eat all organic and non-processed foods. Eating clean is the way to go! “Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat”

Sorry the blog is so short, I just have a lot to do. Itemizing everything and getting everything ready to hit the road tomorrow (in our rental car) is keeping me busy! Hope everyone is doing well 🙂 Travis will make sure to blog about Big Sur and San Fran with tons of pictures to come! Cheers!

Day 16, 17, 18, and 19,

I apologize to all of our blog followers, We have been moving and haven’t been able to keep up with the blog.  We were dealing with packing, moving company, and another sewage overflow.  It is so amazing to free ourselves … Continue reading