Last week, we stayed at Treebones in Big Sur for half of our vacation and San Francisco for the second half. Enjoying  both the peacefulness and beauty of the remote coastal area as well as the rattle and hum of the big city, I would say it was an ideal vacation.

Here's a little information on Treebones: 

Treebones is the name affectionately coined for this wonderful place back  in the '60's by Big Sur locals. This unusual triangular piece of land is surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest and the Pacific Ocean. It was then a  crude recycling wood mill. A local character by the name of Patrick Cassidy leased the land and struck a deal with US Forestry whereby he was permitted to haul dead wood from the surrounding coastal mountains onto the site. Once on the land the wood was milled into usable lumber and sold.. The old sun-baked silvery tree-bones lying around conjured the name "Treebones" in the minds of those enjoying the local scene. Today, Treebones Resort tries to employ the concept of re-use & re-cycle . We are making attempts to recycle even when it is at great personal cost. On our site, the extremely hot heat exhaust created from our clean burning, energy-producing turbines is used to heat the pool, hot tub and radiant flooring in the lodge, restrooms and shower area. And there's more to come!

We stayed in a Yurt which overlooked the Pacific ocean and it was wonderful! Big Sur is really a magical place as everyone says it is. It took me a day to get used to the remoteness of it: no cell service, no TV, no radio stations....but after I settled into the quiet, calm of Big Sur, I started to really appreciate the peacefulness of the place. Cameron and I took beautiful hikes everyday through places like  Limekiln State Park and  Julia Pfeiffer State Park and McWay Falls.
Later in the week we drove north toward Monterey and hiked through Point Lobos State Reserve and the next day hiked in the South end of Point Reyes.

I was reminded during the last week of all the absolute beauty we live in and live near and how lucky I feel to live in California. 

When we originally began planning our trip 6 months ago, we thought we had to go far away to make it a "real" vacation but because of economic and other unforeseen issues that came up, we decided to stay in California and I am SO glad we did. We had the added bonus of getting to use my mom's Prius last week, so we averaged 50 mpg (twice the gas mileage we would have gotten in our car).

With gas prices as high as they are and considering the carbon footprint issues of traveling by airplane, I think our family will start to focus most of our vacation time close to home. And this trip reminded me of just HOW MUCH California has to offer. I fell like we have just scratched the surface of all there is to see here.