christmas in sayulita

So clearly if I'm posting about Christmas, I am WAAAAY behind on blogging.  Life has been even more insane than usual (mostly good things, yay!) and it feels like everything has been going 120 miles an hour, pretty much since this amazing trip I took with my family over Christmas.  What's with all the crazy?  Well, once we got back from Sayulita, we were in Colorado for roughly two weeks before we headed out on our epic road trip adventure.  We spent three months wandering the California coast and reconnecting with old friends.  While on the trip, we started chatting with a good friend of mine from college about the possibility of doing some shooting in Nepal and decided to book that trip for May, thinking that we would have two months in between the time we got back from the road trip before we left again, which sounded really good in theory.  Of course, once we got back into Boulder, life had decided that it was not, in fact, crazy enough yet.  We randomly started looking at houses, found one that we love, and are now under contract to buy our first house!  About a week after that happened, we noticed a lump on our dog, Ella's, paw.  We took her in to the vet, where they discovered that it was cancerous, so Ella went in for surgery last week and has been recovering nicely. 

Phew.

So, long story short, this is why I'm posting Christmas photos in what's almost May.  My family is awesome, and I'm so lucky that we love hanging out and traveling with each other.  We spent two weeks in Sayulita, Mexico, aka maybe my new favorite place on earth.  I was constantly grinning, taking in all of the rainbow colors that make up this mellow, happy town.  I love Mexico - I always have felt so at home there.  I love Mexican food.  I love Mexican culture.  I love Mexican soap operas and candy flavors and Spanish reggae.  So much love.  I can not WAIT to go back to Sayulita :)

This was our Christmas Eve - we were all having too much fun to cook dinner so we walked down the street and got some pizza.  We sat down outside to eat and then it started pouring, so we brought the pizza back to our place, drank some margaritas, and then hung out on the beach at night once it cleared up.  My brothers had found some giant sparklers in town so we obviously brought those out to the beach with us and danced around.  This was one of my favorite nights of all time and even though some of the photos are blurry, the memories are not :)

Right about now was when I took a Roman Candle to the head and burned off a big chunk of hair.  Haha.  It's okay, the only damage done was a cigar-sized burn on my scalp :)

day 36 (shiprock, antelope canyon & sedona)

We are now on DAY 36 of our epic road trip...not everything has gone according to plan, but everything has been amazing!  I had grand plans of updating the blog more frequently, but that hasn't quite worked out.  However, I have been keeping my Instagram pretty well updated, so if you're interested, check it out!The caravan situation:  We're still TOTALLY comfortable and happy... actually, surprisingly so.  Our caravan is only 24 feet, so I was prepping myself to feel cramped or easily irritated or claustrophobic, but it's felt more and more like home every day, and I still feel like we have more than enough space.  We are comfortable, warm, cozy, and happy!

Mechanically, everything is pretty much 100% - yay!  We've had some minor issues with the alternator not fully charging the main engine battery, but it seems to be due to a loose wire or something and thankfully Zach knows what he's doing and was able to rig something up and make it work until we reached my parents' house in San Luis Obispo.  Then he took the whole thing apart, fixed everything, put it back together, and now we're good to go!  So thankful to be with someone who understands engines.. plus, the cool part is that you can fix the engine from the INSIDE... sweet, huh?

The food situation:  Everyone asks what we've been doing for food, especially the friends who know I've been in nutrition school for the last year or so.  For so many people (and for me in a past life), road trips = fast food and drive-thrus, but thankfully we have a tiny kitchen that is surprisingly decent, and we've had tons of fun cooking!  Eating well on the road has been no problem at all.  The hardest part about eating intentionally has been something that I wouldn't have expected:  friends!  Haha.  We have LOVED seeing all of our friends along the way and having a chance to hang out ... when we get into town in a new place, we obviously want to go hang out and celebrate with our lovely friends and so we've ended up eating out and drinking more than we are used to.  No complaints here (but I may or may have not gained like 12 pounds in the last month, haha)!  I'm tempted to blame this on a certain buddy in LA who pretty much forced cheese and champagne on me on a daily basis.... you know who you are :)

Initially, I was worried that I'd be lonely on this trip.  Although I'm a huge introvert, I love having loved ones nearby, and I was worried I'd feel like I was missing out socially.  However, the opposite has happened.  I forget how many wonderful friends we have along the way, and we've been super busy!  This has been one of the more social periods of my life and I'm loving it.

These are some shots from our first few stops, in Shiprock NM and then on towards Flagstaff and Sedona... both of which we loved!  I miss the desert so much sometimes.

Four Corners (NM, CO, UT, AZ):

 Making lunch in Shiprock:

 Our good buddy Caleb insisted we head to Antelope Canyon... what a gorgeous place!  I'm so glad we went :)  Although it's clear I'm no landscape photographer, it's the most amazing place!

I feel like, with images of Antelope Canyon, a lot gets lost.  Everyone's so focused on the stunning reds and purples and oranges that it's easy to lose a sense of scale.  This tiny canyon is HUGE, and makes you feel so small :

Then on to Horseshoe Bend at the Grand Canyon:

While hanging out in Sedona, we met some awesome characters, including this kind, hilarious guy who has biked something like 50,000 miles with his dog.  Let me emphasize: BIKED. WITH. his DOG.  Not kidding:

 Hope you guys are all doing well :)

(day 10) long exposure fun at the salton sea

So we've been on the road for 10 days now; on one hand, it feels like we've been living this way forever, and on the other hand, it's totally flying by.  We spent the last week or so in Flagstaff and Sedona.  Originally, we thought a week would be plenty of time, but we felt like we could have stayed another month.  I have like a trillion photos of Antelope Canyon to sort through, but I'm hoping to be able to blog that all soon.  In the meantime, we're currently camped out at the Salton Sea in California.  We had actually no plans to stay here.  I knew the Salton Sea was a place I wanted to check out, but I didn't envision staying more than a few hours - all of the photos I had seen were of Bombay Beach, an abandoned, formerly submerged town with an eerie quality to it - a place that would have been cool to take a quick look at and then move on.  We still hope to check it out, but two days ago we were driving out of Thermal towards Niland, saw the sun begin to set, and pulled over into what we thought was just an old parking lot but which turned out to be actually a quite nice campground... and we've been here ever since.  Who would have guessed this place was so beautiful?  We've been seeing the most incredible sunsets and sunrises, and I've been having so much fun messing around with some long night exposures and light painting... although, I remembered to bring my tripod but somehow managed to leave every single one of my quick release plates at home so I've been using a stack of nutrition books on a picnic table in place of a tripod.  Oops.

This next shot was taken in total darkness, about an hour and a half after sunset.  The colors were so crazy!

 ^

^ You can see the stack of books I used as a makeshift tripod on the table above.  Heh heh.

beret & jeff (sayulita photographer)

I'm lucky that my sister and her boyfriend are the cutest ever.  Portraits taken in Sayulita, Mexico. 

the next adventure...

Next step in this crazy adventure called life: we're going on the road!  We bought an old RV and are driving out to the sunny west coast to chase the sunshine and connect with some friends & family....yep,  just like your retired grandparents ;)As of now, we're planning to be on the road for most of January, February, and at least part of March.

We have so many fun spots we'd like to stop at along the way!  Although we do have a general idea of dates, we're not going to be super strict about which exact days in which locations.  Why not?  Well, that depends, in part, on YOU!

If you live in or relatively near-ish any of these spots along the way, I'd love to do a session with you!  Or, have you always wanted to have a session in one of these spots, and want to meet me out there?

Or, I'd love to meet you for coffee... or park our RV in your driveway for a day or two....or have you tell me about your favorite local thing to see or do.  If I end up with tons of people in a similar area wanting sessions, we'll stay there for a bit longer.  Yay!

Here's a rough estimate of our driving plan, so far:

If there's enough interest,  we may consider heading up farther north towards Washington & Oregon after March 7th :)  So if you're interested in a session along the way, get in touch!

If you're a current client, you can still order prints, albums, and graduation announcements and schedule your session for the future, just like always.  And for those of you staying in Colorado, I promise lots of updates as we hit the road!