Here are some of my favorite photos from the road trip portion of our California trip. The first three are from the Getty Museum, because it’s impossible to take a bad photo there! We hadn’t planned to stop, but instinct took over. I did an internship organized through the Getty in one summer in college and absolutely fell in love with the place.

The magic of the Getty is really the buildings and the grounds. The art is always high-quality but nothing beats planting one’s feet on Italian travertine marble whilst enjoying an elevated, panoramic view of LA.

Nathan walking around the Getty.

This statue was amazing, and I love the juxtaposition of the three men on the walkway behind it.

Facing Los Angeles; I think this would be a perfect photo for the cover of a Murakami novel.

The coast off of San Simeon. We saw a sea lion, an abundance of hawks and a freakin’ buzzard.

Beautiful and weird flowers(?) outside of our bed-and-breakfast in Carmel.

Our friend Elizabeth and me in Ukiah. Part of our dinner was corn from those very stalks! It was so good to see her. We waited for the temperature to drop before going to sleep and ended up playing cards at the late-night doughnut shop after dinner.

It’s hard to believe how much ground we covered on our trip. We flew into in Fullerton (Orange County), picked up our rental car and drove into Ukiah 72 hours later. Since we here at crab&bee have a focus on sustainability, here are some of my trip musings on the topic:

• A versatile, durable travel cup and/or mug is a necessity for avoiding waste; I bought a double-walled stainless steel cup when I got back that should serve me well for both hot and cold drinks.
• The Pacific Northwest/San Francisco are kind of an anomaly when it comes to composting food waste. At least recycling is at least pretty standard on the entire west coast.
• On the flip side, nothing is wasted on a farm! Food scraps in Ukiah (mostly locally-raised food) were placed in a bucket and dumped back into the yard compost pile.
• We upgraded to a fuel efficient rental car, which meant getting about 25 miles/gallon. It’s crazy that my ’98 Honda Civic gets significantly better mileage than a brand-new “fuel efficient” car!

Travel can be inherently high-impact (transportation fuel, meals out, hotel rooms that launder bedding and towels daily, packaged food), but I think it’s a fun mental challenge to reduce your waste while on vacation. Anybody have any good sustainable travel pointers?