Molly in New York in the summer. Coming soon: Molly in New York in the fall.

The last few shots of the roll always go to the plants.

Joshua Tree was wonderful and bizarre. We stayed at the 29 Palms Inn, where we ate our meals and went on a guided nature walk. We scheduled a Sound Bath at Integratron, which I highly recommend. Our trip actually ended in San Diego, but this is where my photos stop.

Please ask if you have any questions about our itinerary. These photos have been sitting for a while, so I was more interested in getting them up than being thorough. Now, back to the present.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

We had another long day of driving from Big Sur to L.A. We stopped at Point Lobos State Reserve to admire the seals and woke up early the next morning for a hike to the Griffith Observatory. (And we saw the amazing Turrell retrospective at LACMA.)

Drive, hike, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

Big Sur views from an evening walk at Deetjen's—another place to return.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

We left San Francisco after two days and drove south to Big Sur. We stayed up late at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn, sitting on the floor with a bottle of wine, pouring over journals left in the room. (It's a thing, apparently.) We read about others' children, divorces, travels, sex lives, dreams. We laughed, and each cried a few times. Ashlee worried about a ghost a visitor claimed to have seen in the room (in the journal from 1992). I laughed.

Midnight came and we went south along Highway 1—our weeklong guide—to the Esalen Institute for a night bath. We met at the side of the road and a man with a flashlight led a group of us down to the bathhouse. We changed out of our clothes, only in our skin, and we bathed in hot springs on a cliff. The hot water and the cold Pacific air, everything dark except for the stars above, everything silent except for the waves below. It was 3 a.m.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

We spent two days in San Francisco, mostly walking and eating a lot of pastry and ice cream—of which I won't bore you with the photos—a beer instead! While the other cities seemed more obvious, I couldn't quite put my finger on this one.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

Oyster shucking (and eating) near Tomales Bay and my first look at San Francisco.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

One of our favorite stops of the trip was spent in Boonville, CA. It was a long, windy drive through redwoods and then into Mendocino County—such a surprisingly beautiful landscape. We ate and drank and sat by the fire at the Boonville Hotel, which we had read about in the New York Times. We had homemade date scones the next morning and spent a good hour roaming around a nearby apple orchard before the next leg.

This part of California is called Anderson Valley—a place to return.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013