Road trip from Monterrey, NL to California, USA

Some trips are planned for months, and some are put together with an open map and a single rule: keep driving. This was one of the second kind. We left home in Monterrey, Nuevo León, crossed the border and headed for the Pacific with no itinerary beyond a list of places I'd been saving for years. Days later we were standing in front of Oregon's waterfalls, wondering how a trip that started among the hills of home ended up in forests from another planet.

The coast: Mt. Tamalpais and Point Reyes

The first day on the coast was the kind that justifies the whole trip — and every hour of highway it took to get there. We climbed Mt. Tamalpais in the late afternoon, when the Pacific fog starts crawling up the slopes and the golden hills seem to float above the sea. It's not a place that lets itself be photographed quickly: you have to wait for the light and the fog to come to an agreement.

From there we went on to Point Reyes. The cover photo is exactly that moment: the bluff drops toward a beach that dissolves into the haze, and the line of waves goes on and on as far as you can see. We walked the edge without saying much. Some landscapes ask for silence.

San Francisco in the fog

That same night we drove into San Francisco. The next morning the Golden Gate woke up wrapped in fog — no blue-sky postcard, and thank goodness: the bridge peeking through the gray is a thousand times more interesting. Sometimes "bad weather" is the best gift a photographer can get.

Oregon: chasing waterfalls

The last two days belonged to the forest. We drove north to Abiqua Falls, a curtain of water dropping inside an amphitheater of basalt columns — getting there means a slippery descent holding onto ropes, camera hanging from your chest and heart in your throat. Worth every step.

The closer was Blue Pool: water so unreally blue it looks photoshopped in real life. It arrives filtered through miles of volcanic rock and comes out that impossible color. No photo does it full justice — and believe me, I tried.

What I'm taking with me

Every place from this trip now lives on the home page, with its location written under each photo. But the best part doesn't show up in the pictures: the gas-station tacos, the playlists on repeat, and that feeling that the world is enormous and we're only starting to see it.

If you're thinking about doing this route: do it. And leave room in your bag for the fog.