On our first day in California we saw sun light two times. Sunset and sunrise. At sunset we were at the Point Reyes, sunrise we decided to see over San Francisco Bay with Golden Gate Bridge in front of us. Most of the sunrise was not a big event, as you can see clouds were all over the sky, but there was a little break on the horizon with sun picking out couple times as it went up. Then for about 1-2 minutes we were enlightened with this view.
Do you read your own blog posts from some past back? I don’t do this too often, but once in a while, mostly after one of you my great visitors leave a comment on some not so recent post (and I have more than 400 of them now 
) I go and check it out, and usually end up reading my own post as well. Most of the time I actually get quite a nice surprise, like wow, did I write that? I usually remember the photo very well, but the writing is always spontaneous, based on my mood and what I remember about the location or experience while taking the photo. I guess it is one of the reasons we write these posts, to go once in a while and remind us about cool things that we did once upon a time.
On our second night in California we stayed in Petaluma. The day was windy and rainy, with bands of rain clouds come and go. We did some touristy things in Calistoga, unsuccessfully tried to taste some wine in Napa valley, drove back over the ridge to Sonoma valley while getting ambushed by hail. We ended up tasting wine at one of the wineries in Sonoma valley, they are a bit more relax compare to Napa and don’t require reservations (seriously? Napa is so commercialized that to taste their wine one requires reservation…nuts).
At the end of the day I wanted to go and catch sunset over Pacific ocean, so we took off from Petaluma towards the ocean, and straight into full overcast and nonstop rain. It was a bit depressing, all the way from Tomales to Point Reyes Station on HW1 rained nonstop and I thought we’d just do a loop and go back to our hotel. But right around Point Reyes Station there was a hint of light on the west with some hope of clear skies. By the time we arrived at Point Reyes we had blue sky over our heads.
Today I’m going follow up with another image from the Big Sur. We were driving up the Sycamore Canyon road from the Pfeiffer beach and about one mile from the ocean saw this idyllic scene with full moon and couple horses hanging out there eating some grass. Of course I had to stop and see if I could immortalize it. 
When you go to new destinations do you use any type of tools to see where are the most interesting photography spots or you just go there and hope to see it and discover it on your own? Travel books are great, but they usually don’t tell you where to go to take sunrise, sunset or other interesting photos. I’ve been using Flickr to see geo-tagged photos but find it not very user friendly. What about you?
All I can say about Big Sur is that I’ll try to make sure to visit it again and I’ll recommend it to anyone else. Stunning place with stunning views. We drove south from the Pacific Grove down HW 1 to Big Sur and probably had to stop every five minutes to look at the awesome views the nature presented to us. On one of those stops I spotted unassuming house seating on the cliff and wondered what it would be to live there (mind you it probably cost only about somewhere under twenty million). Every night see some beautiful sunsets, watch whales doing their migrations, seals and otters, listen to crashing waves way below and just be part of this environment.
One can dream.
