I've Officially Been Converted to a Cali Girl
After my two week trip to California, I am in love. From the beaches in the South to the rolling hills in the North, I was born to be a Cali girl.
Let’s face it, college is a dream life. You live next to your best friends, you do practically nothing for four years, and you get a degree in the process. Once college is over real life comes at you so fast you don’t even know what hit you. I wasn’t ready for that smack in the face of adulthood right after I graduated, so I decided to take a month-long trip to the Golden State and mark that off my bucket list. Lucky for me my boyfriend has some amazing family spread all throughout California. Because of this, we had the opportunity to check out the greatest parts of Cali and meet some pretty awesome people along the way!
Our first week started out in the beautiful beaches of Southern California. Andrew’s brother goes to San Diego State University and let us crash on his couch for a couple of days while we explored beautiful San Diego. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it. I was in love from the time I stepped off the plane *peep the video of us in the airport where I am bouncing around like a 4-year-old that just arrived in Disneyland.* We went to the famous San Diego zoo, kayaked the ocean of La Jolla, and explored cliff after cliff with breath-taking views. I was amazed by the fact that you could be standing on the beach and also be 10 feet away from the mountains. You don’t see that in North Carolina. Also the palm trees.. oh the palm trees. The locals made fun of me for being mesmerized by the tall palm trees, but there is something so magical about those trees. Pretty much my entire camera roll looks like this:
After a few days in San Diego, Andrew’s cousin let us couch surf in her house in Laguna Beach on our way up to LA. We road-tripped from Laguna Beach to Malibu, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and then back to San Diego, all in one day. You could say we were tired that night. My favorite place we visited the entire trip was one of the quick stops we made this day, Malibu. The mountains in Malibu were so beautiful and the beaches were so peaceful. We drove up to the highest point of Pepperdine University (AKA where Zoey 101 was filmed) and parked our jeep on a lookout over the water and just looked out at the beautiful town of Malibu. I would have been perfectly fine if time would have stopped forever in that moment.
Next up on our trip was Northern Cali! Andrew’s parents live an hour away from basically everything cool in Northern California. An hour away from San Francisco, an hour from Lake Tahoe, and an hour from Napa Valley so we took awesome day-trips while also hanging out with his parents. Our first trip was to Lake Tahoe where we hiked a mountain to a huge waterfall. The temperature outside was 80 degrees but there was snow on the ground, it was crazy! Lake Tahoe showed me some of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. Our next trip was to San Francisco. This town was awesome; from the diverse people, to the massive hills, to the amazing food in each different part of town. I loved every second of it. We then explored his parents town of El Dorado Hills. The place definitely lives up to the cool name. There were rolling hills everywhere. Andrew's backyard is basically a drop off down a hill with views almost as pretty as Tahoe. But at this point I felt like every part of California was beautiful.
I was so sad to say goodbye to California because not only did this mean saying goodbye to my new favorite state, it also meant moving to a different state as my boyfriend AND having to start adulting in my new state. Other than the sad departure I would 10/10 recommend going to California on your college post-graduation trip, but be careful because adulthood still smacks ya’ in the face no matter how long you put it off.
Thanks for reading!
-Future California Resident