point lobos.

A couple of weeks before Eliza was born, Sam and I took a trip down to Monterey and Carmel for his birthday. We were nervous about staying over night anywhere, so we made a quick day trip out of it. We stumbled upon one of the most beautiful reserves w've ever been in. It's a fluke that we even found it, seeing as we were feeling pretty cheap that day. We kept driving past the entrance to the park trying to find a way around it so that we could get to the coast. After awhile, we finally forked over the $10 admission and had absolutely no regrets. 

Point Lobos is gorgeous. Once again, Northern California is King of combining all good things into one magical scene. You have the trees and forest, and the cliffs and coast. The park had the perfect trails for an obscenely pregnant woman to walk on because they were mostly flat and easy to maneuver through. It was magic hour, and so the light threading through the branches made the walk quite dreamy. It was almost ridiculous how picture-perfect the scene was. We would hear a rustling to our left and see a deer lit up in a warm clearing, and simultaneously a bunny would cross our path ahead of us. No joke. The coves along the coastline had water that almost glowed Caribbean-blue, and we even ran across a pack of seals and their pups just sunbathing in the sand. 

It's so crazy to see this picture of me, by the way. It looks like I just have Eliza all balled up underneath my shirt. Sometimes I have a difficult time connecting Eliza with that baby that was in my belly for 9 months. They seem like two different babies. Can you believe she was actually inside of me!? This was one of the last pictures I allowed anyone to take of me. It was right around the time my face blew up like a water balloon.