I was talking to my sister-in-law the other day about our California adventure, and she asked why I described it as a “once in a lifetime” trip. It was a fair question, especially since I said in the same breath that I hoped we would have a chance to experience a similar trip again! I think I describe it as once in a lifetime because if our recent trip was the only time we’ll have that experience, I’ll have no regrets – we saw everything we wanted to, ate exactly where we wanted to, stayed where we wanted to, and had the weather we wanted. Needless to say, we are grateful. Aside from the weather, our lack of regrets was not by chance, but through a lot of careful planning. So before I get into a full recap, I thought I’d offer a few tips we picked up along the way! Surveying from the top of Nevada Falls in Yosemite 1. Plan in two chunks. This was our first time planning a point-to-point trip, as opposed to a stay-in-one-place-all-week trip, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, it was a bit stressful! In order to keep the process enjoyable and not get overwhelmed, we found it was best to plan in two chunks: — 5-6 months out: We opened Google Maps and started a new Google doc, then plotted every town we could possibly visit between Los Angeles and San Francisco, in order. Then, using our initial research, we streamlined our route, chose the towns we wanted to stay in each night, and made our “big” reservations – hotels, flights, rental car. We also brainstormed possible places to eat, things to do, and sites to see in each location. We were pretty wiped out once we had completed this