Tag: Travel

Birch Bay

On January 20, 2019 my boyfriend and I decided to take a mini road trip up to Birch Bay, WA. Below are some photos I took while there, along with a little memo on our excursion.

Birch Bay is about 30 minutes northwest of Bellingham. After studying all afternoon with a friend from my marketing class, I had Alex pick me up from the library. Instead of heading straight back to the apartment, we decided to get on the freeway and head towards Birch Bay.

When we got there, there was a little public beach to walk on. It was fairly small, as it was gated off on both sides by private beach access, but still beautiful! It was really cold while we were there. I was able to snap a few pictures while standing outside before running back to the car to thaw out.

I apologize for the quality of the photos, as they are not my best work… I hope to start getting back to photography in my free time. It seems like I don’t have much free time to keep up with this part of my blog with trying to manage my classes and workout sessions. As the weather starts to get nicer I hope to start exploring places in and around Bellingham more as well as posting more of my adventures on here. For now, Birch Bay will suffice!

Overall, this little outing was a lot of fun. It was able to get out of Bellingham for a couple hours and not having to travel very far to do it. As the weather starts getting warmer in the spring, I really want to try and take a trip out to Mt. Baker and the Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon.

One last note about this trip: all the public bathrooms on the beaches and in the state park are closed during the winter… so make sure you take care of this somewhere outside of Birch Bay. Also, none of the shops were open because it was a Sunday. I would take this into consideration if planning on going here anytime soon!!

Hawaii for the First Time

Join me on my adventure (and many photos) as I embark on Honolulu for the first time!

Over this summer at the end of August and into early September, my family and boyfriend all flew to Honolulu for the first time EVER! We spent 10 days at a house we rented on the North Shore. When we first stepped foot outside of the airport in Honolulu, I couldn’t believe how humid it was. It took me a couple days to adjust, but after that I barely noticed it. Driving from the airport to North Shore took about 45 minutes. The house we stayed at was beautiful! There was so much greenery and the view of the ocean from the lanai was amazing. 

The view of the ocean from the lanai at the house we stayed at.

We spent most of our time exploring the island and shopping (of course). One of our favorite spots was a city called Haleiwa, just about 10-15 minutes from where we were staying. Here we went to Laniakea Beach to watch the sea turtles, we went shopping, and tried many of the food trucks around the island. Most of our days were spent driving to different beaches and swimming in the ocean. I had never been in water so warm or so blue, it was amazing to me how clear the water was! 

  • The beaches here were so beautiful. The sand was soft and the water warm.. what else could you ask for?

Another thing that really surprised me about Hawaii was all the little geckos everywhere, both inside the house and out. There were also a lot of chickens running around. Here are a few photos I captured of the geckos. These were really hard to take, they move really fast and taking photos of them on an Iphone was a challenge! But being on “vacation time” I had all the time in the world to try and capture how cute these guys looked:

  • This was taken in Waimea Valley 
  • A little blurry, but so cute! These little guys move so fast!

As you know, I love taking photos of flowers. The North Shore didn’t disappoint with all the beautiful flora and fauna. It was really cool to see the difference in plants and animals when comparing my home in the Pacific Northwest to a tropical island like Oahu. Check out some of the flowers below: 

These other photos are of different places we went including the Waimea Valley (where some of the photos of flowers above were taken). The Waimea Valley is known to be sacred to the Hawaiians. Here you will beautiful botanical gardens, a waterfall, and a place that holds a luau in the evenings. We also went to La’ie Point. This was probably one of my favorite places we visited while on the island. You can walk around these cliffs that over look the water and see the huge waves crashing below you. As you look out in the distance you can see a rock with a huge hole in it that was cause from a tsunami hitting it. 

Going to Oahu this summer was something I will remember forever. It was so beautiful, the beaches were so warm and inviting, the people there were very helpful, and the food was amazing. I hope to explore the other islands in the future and make my way back to Oahu someday. But for now, I have all the photos to reminisce about all the places we went and long for the warm sun on my skin, sand in my hair, and spending time with the people I love the most.