We made it to the west coast, baby! When we started our travel adventure back in July, we mapped out a plan through September but after that we had no agenda. While we were visiting friends in Las Vegas, we decided - why not head out to California after this?!

And a plan was born!

We already shared how we traveled through the Mojave desert and Joshua Tree National Park (our 8th National Park that we've been to now) as we journeyed toward California so now it's time to share what we've been up to on the coast of beautiful California.

We got to visit San Diego for the first time back in 2012 when we took our kids on a family vacation and James and I immediately fell in love with the place. It's so beautiful and the beaches are just incredible. It's definitely unlike anything you get to experience in or near Oklahoma. So when we thought about how close we were, we knew it needed to be our next destination.

After a whirlwind travel schedule of being on the go and not sticking in one place very long since August, we decided we'd take a little longer here. We booked a week and have already added more time because we don't want to leave. haha! When we first arrived in town, we went straight for the ocean. This is the Torrey Pines area and Del Mar beach.

One of our favorite beaches out here is Mission Beach. It’s nice because there’s a huge parking lot that’s FREE so it’s easy to park, the beach is really big with plenty of room, and there are shops and places to eat, plus a cool little amusement park right by the beach. There’s also a nice big boardwalk at the edge of the beach so you can walk, skate, or ride a bike. All in all we just really enjoy it here. We’ve been a couple times and have loved lying in the sand and listening to the waves. It's also pretty funny to get to watch the birds fight over food packages they manage to get ahold of.

We saw a man and his son pulling some kind of seaweed stuff up onto the beach from the edge of the water and we weren't sure what they were doing so we asked why and they showed us that there are little sea creatures living in the seaweed. It's hard to see them in the seaweed itself but they'd put them in the mask and you can see - the little starfish were all in that. They pull them out and put them in the water to try to save them. So cool!

We aren't much for driving at night but since we're on the west coast we knew we needed to spend an evening at the beach and watch the sunset. We went out before the sunset so we could spend some time in the water and look for shells and such and had a great time.

One of the things I always look for and want to find is a sand dollar. Well we found a couple and then quickly realized how to look for them and where to find them and we found TONS of them. I was so excited! The tide was low so the water was pretty far out and it made it easy to look for them. We had fun seeing how many we could find and trying to grab the ones we spotted before the waves would crash over them. 😂

It got a little chilly toward the end and I was afraid I was going to have permanent goose bumps. They seriously didn’t go away for probably an hour. So worth it. It was so much fun and so beautiful once the sun was setting.

There is much more to tell about San Diego so stay tuned. If you want an amazing place to visit, this is it. And we're excited to share all kinds of great things to do and see here. :)