There and back again.

Four days ago we were standing in the Redwoods at our wedding site. It was one stop on a whirlwind trip that began in San Diego Thursday night, swept through Eureka Friday, paused for a wedding near San Francisco Saturday, and then ended back in San Diego Sunday afternoon.

The original occasion for the trip was the wedding of Sarah's college roommate, Stephanie, but as her wedding neared several changes and loose ends in our own wedding plans made it hard to pass up one last chance to visit Eureka before June. So we tacked on an extra day and an extra 10 hours of driving.

The trip turned out to be well worth it. The main change to our plans comes in the form of a change of venue for the wedding reception (more on that in a forthcoming entry). This was also the impetus for the extra effort in the road trip: We couldn't imagine planning a reception for a site we'd never visited. We checked out the site, met the owner and the property manager (both chill northern Californians), and came away quite happy with our decision and ready to plan with tons of pictures in hand. We also double-checked the ceremony site, confirmed our reservation for the rehearsal dinner, and met with our caterer to finalize the menu. We did all this in about three hours, then crashed.

The wedding was a blast. We got to hang with Brian, one of our favorite Northern Californians and a friend of Sarah's from Davis. It was the sixth or so wedding we've attended together (and the last before our wedding), and as always, we took away ideas for our own.

After leaving Eureka, we basically spent three days in the rain, which followed us all the way home to San Diego. As we came out of the redwoods on Highway 101, we ran into a fairly heavy snowstorm that forced us to try out the chains we had bought Thursday night before leaving. Sarah is the master of putting on snow chains. We passed at least a half dozen cars that had slid off the road as we made slow but steady progress through two hours of constant snowfall.

Quite beautiful, though.

Jason

PS: Pictures, from top: A view from the trail that leads to our ceremony site; us after fixing chains to Sarah's Vue; the scenery as we made our way through the snow storm; and us at the wedding with Brian.