Just Beyond

August 17th, 2026

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I've been to San Francisco plenty of times for work, but until this trip, that was really all of California I knew.

Airport. City. Hotel. Work. Home.

I'd been that close to all of these places for years. I'd just never gone any farther.

This time, I had the opportunity to change that.

And I felt like a kid in a candy store.

It seemed like everywhere I went there was something I'd never seen before.

Tule elk moving through the fog. California quail sitting on fence posts and rocks. Coyotes working their way across the hillsides. Seals piled onto rocks along the coast. Owls tucked away in trees. Raptors seemingly everywhere.

I finally saw an American kestrel, which was a total fan girl moment for me. The picture I got is terrible. I don't even care. I was just excited to finally see one.

There were bigger moments too.

I watched a coyote work its way down a hillside, suddenly pounce on something in the grass, eat it, and keep moving.

I watched an egret hunt until it caught a fish.

One foggy morning I watched elk slowly appear and disappear into the mist.

And one evening, after the sun had already gone down, I found two bull elk on top of a ridge sparring against this deep blue sky. There wasn't much light left, so eventually all I could really see were their silhouettes and their antlers coming together.

That ended up being one of my favorite moments of the entire trip.

But I think what has stayed with me most is the thought that all of this had been here the entire time.

I'd flown into San Francisco over and over again. I'd gotten off the plane, done what I came there to do, and flown home.

And just beyond the little piece of California I'd gotten used to were redwood forests, fog-covered hillsides, rocky coastlines, and more wildlife than I knew where to point my camera.

This time, I had an opportunity to go a little farther.

So I took it.

And it makes me wonder how often we stop at the edge of what's familiar simply because that's where we've always stopped.

Maybe the next possibility isn't always somewhere completely different.

Maybe sometimes it's just beyond where we've gone before.

I came home with way more photos and video than I knew what to do with, but I put some of my favorite moments together so I could share a little bit of what I got to experience out there.