Our Little Getaway Spot in the Clouds, Part 1

So when I went through the photos and edited the ones I wanted to share with you, I may have counted like 45. Which, let's be honest, is a little overkill. It wasn't so long ago that a two-photo blog post was a big deal. Since then things have changed (I spend a lot less time blogging and a lot more time doing other more cool and fun stuff, and I won't lie, it's a better balance). But 45 photos is still overkill. So I broke them up into two posts for you.

Also, I apologize. You're probably looking for some wedding photos, since I did, in fact, just get married. But the strangest thing about that is that I took no photos at all, not a single one. I think that's because I completely trusted my wedding photographer to take care of me. Also I was just having too much fun.

So these photos are from the few short days after the wedding when we took off work and climbed high above the clouds to out little hideaway: The Crow's Nest. It's a little cabin in the woods at the top of some gorgeous rolling hills, near the Russian River.

And that description doesn't do it justice at all!

Take a look.

Yup, that was our view. Pretty spectacular, right? Those chairs were MADE for lounging with a glass of something cold to drink.

There were lots of other places to sit outside and enjoy ourselves as well.

About 20 feet in front of our door! Hills and valleys, oh my.

Some local flora, of course. I can't resist.

We visited Armstrong Woods and took a walk among the redwoods. The bases of the trees were completely overgrown with redwood sorrel, this clover-look-a-like. It's a plant that's adapted to the extremely low light levels under redwood trees (trust me, it's dark down there - trust my camera too, I had to bump up the ISO quite a bit), so much so that if it gets exposed to direct sunlight the leaves fold down so they don't overheat and dry out. Pretty cool, right?

And that concludes the natural history portion of this blog post. :-)

Redwood Sorrel

Of course, like the tourists we were we had to pose in one of the huge trees.

And here I am!

Often I think that if I just hand my camera to Evan, go stand where he was and make him stand where I was, I should be able to get him to take a similar shot, right? Well, somehow he managed to overexpose me and turn me pale as a ghost, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to take the shot vertically instead of horizontally. Once he did, all the vertical shots were blurry. Ah well. 

More redwood sorrel.

I wanted a photo of the two of us, and so I rocked it old school - I put on the 35mm, held the camera in front of us, pre-focused, and took a few shots. It worked!

And that's it for part one! If you made it this far, congratulations. See you soon for part 2!