SAN DIEGO

This past summer, Josh and I were in need of a dream… It is so easy to get lost as we make our way through the day-to-day routine, and dreams seem to get buried under the countless realities that we face. Our dream was to make it out to the West Coast together. Josh had never seen the Pacific Ocean, and I hadn’t been to California in almost a decade. We decided to head to San Diego, and spent this past year dreaming about the trip, researching interesting restaurants, planning details, and purposefully deciding not to plan some of the details…

Our time in San Diego turned out to be life-changing. I had the opportunity to get together with two dear friends who live in California, one of whom I had not seen in almost fourteen years. I get emotional even thinking about our reunion. It was as if no time had passed at all, and our hearts still understood one another as easily as they had when we were twelve years old.

We stayed in the Little Italy district of downtown San Diego, at a wonderful little place called Hotel Vyvant. Luckily, Josh decided to rent a car (I hate driving in new places, haha,) so we did a great deal of adventuring around the area. The food was mind-blowing… seriously, I had the greatest fish taco I have ever tasted at Oscar’s Mexican Seafood. Amazing. Of course we went to the zoo, where I was equipped with my zoom lens and dead-set on getting a shot of a snow leopard. I think my only other chance of getting that shot would be if I camped out in the Himalayas for a prolonged period of time, (and while I would absolutely love to do that, I don’t foresee that trip happening in the near future;)

I tried to soak up each and every moment of this trip… the weather was absolutely incredible, (I knew when we flew back into Charlotte and it was pouring down rain that we were definitely not in California anymore,) and I could seriously get used to palm trees lining the streets where I live. This trip happened because of a dream, and resulted in an unforgettable adventure.