California Part 2: The Vineyard/ The Redwoods

So here's part 2 of my trip to California! We had dinner at Francis Ford Coppola's Winery one night while in CA & the food was really good but the land was beautiful and his giftshop/mini museum was the best part! This is where I bought most of the gifts for my family.






The grounds were so beautiful & there was even a baby bunny! It was quite the hit since there was a group of women taking photos together while I was checking out the back patio & my ears perked up when I heard one of them gasp and aww "baby bunnnyy!!!". And that's how I spent 10 minutes taking photos of a baby bunny.






desk & chair from 'The Godfather' // costumes from 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' // Coppola's awards etc // close-up shot of awards // how the t-shirts were packaged (cute!!)


A few days later Ryan, Ryan's brother and I went to a redwood forest with Ryan's uncle since he lives in northern CA & knows the area fairly well.













I'm really missing the views in California. It was really beautiful. Part 3 will be up next week.

-Becca

California Part 1 : The House

I just returned from a week spent in beautiful Santa Rosa, California. Ryan's family invited me along for a family vacation at a house they rented in the mountains. It was so beautiful and scenic and I imagine anyone who lives there is so bored of the views but in flat and dry Texas, it was a welcome change of scenery.

I'm breaking my California posts into 3 parts because I took A LOT of photos. And while I love overwhelming myself with too many photos, I don't imagine the average person wants to be bombarded with a gazillion random photos of stuff. Here we go!





We landed in San Francisco and drove for an hour and a half to Santa Rosa in a rental car. I snapped a few shots but mostly I was tasked with being the navigator. It was SO FOGGY! Poor Ryan was driving a car he's never driven & we were on foggy windy roads for the beginning of the drive until we hit the main highway we rode along.



This was a shot I took hanging out of the window a bit on our way up the hills to the house we were staying at. It was so beautiful! There were deer & wild turkeys all over most of the time.




This is the front & side of the driveway of the house we stayed in for the week. It was so beautiful & big. We had 9 people staying there part of the week & Ryan and I got to have our own room & bathroom which was so nice! The kitchen (which I managed to get absolutely no good photos of) had a huge AGA stove in it which was really neat to use but made the house so HOT during the day since it's on 24/7. Seems more advantageous for a colder climate. The house was really really nice.



This is part of the backyard area. There was a huge multi-level garden leading up to the pool & pool house and off the right of the stairs there was an outside kitchen & a botchi-ball court & more land with a small hiking trail. The second photo is the view from the botchi-ball court. This photo honestly doesn't do the view justice at all but I tried my best. Down below there was this tree with purple flowers covering it that was always swarming with hummingbirds during the day. It was awesome but impossible to photograph.



The trail led to this little area where the owners had kept chickens & goats when they lived in the house but apparently a mountain lion kept getting in and eating everything :o I avoided this area after the word 'mountain lion' came up. Close up of the wheat (I thought it was so pretty!) that my mom was really baffled by -- "What is this?? Why did you take a photo of it??". I really like taking detail shots of things because it helps me remember things better. Maybe it's weird but I don't care!



Hope you enjoyed this! I'll have more photos in a few more days after I finish editing and organizing all of my photos. I feel like I took a million photos over the course of that week!

-Becca