Fall is coming...right? RIGHT?

My favorite season is fall. I absolutely adore everything about autumn: the new crispness in the air, the way the world looks different each morning as the leaves transition from green to amber to orange and brown and then slowly fall to the ground. I love the holidays (Thanksgiving is my very favorite day of the year). I anxiously await the moment I can drag out my bins of sweaters and boots and flannel shirts and my collection of funky jackets. 

So, considering this great love I have for fall, you can imagine my angst at living in Hawaii for three years, land of eternal summer. Whereas most people would find 88 degrees and sunny every single day to be paradise, I found it monotonous. It was one of the biggest drawbacks to living in Hawaii for me: I missed SEASONS. 

After three years, it came time to move from Hawaii and I began to look forward to living in a land of seasons again. But then, of course, the universe played an awful trick on this fall-loving gal and sent me to Florida. So long dreams of fall leaves and 4 seasons. SIGH. 

Well, Florida does have its own charms, and although I'm still not pleased about the fall thing, I've decided to cut the state some slack and make the most of my time here. I am enjoying it so far (although I look forward to the end of the rainy/muggy/hot season we're in now). But this burgeoning love will not stop me from wistfully thinking of the lovely fall seasons I've enjoyed elsewhere. 

One of my favorite fall seasons actually came while living in Hawaii. It was the end of September 2014. Brad was deployed, I was homeschooling the kids and suddenly it felt as if the island of Oahu had shrunk to a miserably small, postage-stamp sized rock in the middle of the ocean. We'd been on the island over a year and the ever-present sunshine had become stifling. I yearned for sweaters and boots and fall leaves and camp fires and wide-open spaces. So I found a space-A flight (basically, open seats on a military aircraft moving cargo) to Travis AFB outside of San Francisco. I rented a campervan, which is a glorified 15-passenger van that was converted to have seats that folded down into a queen-sized bed and a camping kitchen in the back. The kids and I then spent three weeks traveling from San Fran to Pullman, WA, through the Columbia River Gorge to Portland, and then down the west coast back to San Fran. It was three weeks of camping in state and national parks, traveling 3000+ miles of highway, homeschooling on the go while visiting museums and historical sites, visiting every bathroom along I-5, and laughing. Lots of laughing. (And quite a bit of bickering, because KIDS!)  But it was one of the most amazing fall seasons of my life. 

Here are a few pictures of my trip, but you can read my entire journal of the trip on my old photography website by clicking here.