As far as quintessential American road trips go, Big Sur is probably at the top of the list. Not much can top turquoise waters, green hills, sunshine, and seal selfies (...sealfies?). It's a drive that anyone can do and it doesn't take a particular set of skills to navigate. You don't need to research where all the best places are, you just need to, well, drive, because everything is the best. We took the drive up to San Francisco with our friends Rico and Rachel from Get Lost With (plus Bryan Dale), and it was truly a beautiful day.

On our drive up from San Diego, we spent the night in San Luis Obispo (or SLO, as the locals call it). Life isn't always full of cool accommodations, and this night we crashed at the Holiday Inn Express and may have made one too many Chingy references.

As with all great things, our road trip started with coffee. We have a major crush on Scout Coffee, and they recently started roasting their own beans! They also have Bulleit whiskey-infused syrup for your latte, plus milk-and-cookies on the menu. Happy hour, right?!

The wonderful thing about the Instagram community is that you literally have friends wherever you go, and we were so happy to meet up with our friend and SLO local Jaymie Shear again! She has been working on a pretty cool Mug Life project, which you can check out here.

And then, it was time to hit the road. This post isn't full of information about where to find the best hikes, or even the pit stop highlights of Highway 1. It's basically just us driving in a car with our friends, keeping to the scenic route, and stopping when we wanted to. And that's kind of how we think all road trips should be...

To take a moment to be totally honest with you guys, this road trip wasn't the happiest of trips for us. We were all dealing with our own battles, like humans usually are. These days just happened to be more challenging than others, as some of us were dealing with heartbreak, others with grief, and basically all just trying to find meaning. While these thoughts permeated throughout our countless car conversations, we set out to focus on living our lives, experiencing moments, and doing what we love: taking photos! And that's exactly what we did.

No matter how challenging or insurmountable life gets sometimes, we are all firm believers in finding the positive. When you don't find it, seek it out. Our lives are all so precious, and we genuinely try to LIVE our lives everyday and have a bundle of fun on the road. Just because a part of you is sad, doesn't mean that another part of your spirit can't find joy in the moment. So that's what we tried to do, together! Road trips really bring out both the best and worst in people, and it's the ultimate bonding experience.

The boys got a little ambitious and ended up climbing up a dirt hill at this vantage point to take some truly amazing photos. Isn't this place just wonderful?

One suggestion you must take us up on is eating at Big Sur Bakery! Basically our entire trip rotated around which meal we would eat here. All of their food is local, and it doesn't get much better than a glass of rosé in the afternoon. Make sure you order something with bread though, because it's AMAZING! It is a bakery, after all.

We went for a bit of a baby hike at McWay Waterfall Trail to see the classic waterfall. You can't go down to the beach (it's super illegal), but the trail does give you a nice view! The first time we drove Big Sure it was very dark and foggy, so this time it was nice to be able to actually see some things! By the way - apparently there are wild zebras that roam the Hearst lands before you reach Big Sur...so if you see some, please tag us!!

You can view even more photos from this trip on our Exposure page, because we just have sooooo many! Exposure is where we got our start and the first place we started sharing our stories, and we've found the photography community to be really supportive. If you love it too, you can use the code "localwanderer" to get 30% off <3

A Big Sur Road Trip