Merry Christmas, everyone! I do hope that all of you had a very happy holiday season and you are preparing for an amazing 2012.

For the second time this month I find myself in Dana Point, CA. At the beginning of the month, I drove down with 3 other ladies to attend my friend June’s wedding. This time the trip is a Christmas/birthday gift for my mother who is visiting from Texas. While I am staying within blocks of where I stayed at the beginning of the month, the hotels are vastly different. For the wedding trip, 5 girls piled into a room at the local Holiday Inn Express. This trip, mom and I are staying at the Marriott Resort & Spa high on a cliff above the costal city. We arrived tonight after sunset, so we haven’t had a good view of the beach or the hotel grounds yet, but I’m sure it will be glorious in the morning (Whoo hoo! 70 degrees in December.)

Actually, Dana Point reminds me a lot of Del Mar, CA (about an hour south towards San Diego) where I first fell in love with California during my senior year in high school. I flew out to LA from Pittsburgh to meet my mom who was already here on a business trip. I had never been to the West Coast but I had images in my head of beautiful weather, beautiful people and lavish homes from what I saw on TV (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, anyone?). Well, California did not disappoint!

Mom and I stayed at a hotel on the Disneyland property, but we decided to take a day trip down to San Diego to see their famous zoo. We had directions and itinerary planned by my mother’s friend (and local resident) Donna. She suggested stopping in Del Mar along the way to grab lunch and take in the views. We exited the freeway when we saw the signs for Dana Point and eventually pulled into an upscale shopping center close to the famous Del Mar Race Track to find a place to eat. Lunch was at a restaurant with a balcony overlooking the water. From the moment we sat down, I was mesmerized – the blue water with highlights of gold from the sun, the warm temperatures in January that allowed me to walk around the city in a pair of shorts instead of the boots and heavy coat I’d be wearing if I was back in Pittsburgh, the beautiful smiling shoppers and wait staff at the restaurant – it all seemed exactly as it did on TV.

After lunch we looked in the boutique shops. I remember buying a pair of turquoise and sliver earrings in one shop and then later not wanting to leave a locally owned book store that also had a cozy coffee shop inside (this was years before the Barnes and Noble/Starbucks alliance took over every shopping plaza). I was in love with California, with life, with travel. From that moment on I was making plans to move out west. While I was hoping for an instantaneous move, it ended up taking me about 6 years to move to San Francisco and then another 5 to get to Los Angeles. Home.

While I plan to spend a good part of my day in Dana Point tomorrow doing nothing but sitting around the resort, researching my 2012 travel strategy and, if I’m feeling particularly active, maybe hitting the fitness center, I definitely want to see if I can find that spot where I fell in love with Southern California. While I find so much joy in traveling to foreign countries, I am extremely lucky to come back to my home state with some of the most beautiful vistas anywhere. I am blessed.