i ♥ faces - week 5 - "Places I Love"

This weeks i ♥ faces challenge is to highlight the most romantic places you've been and then tell the story of why.

I started looking back thru our photos as we've definitely been to some very romantic places - sunsets on the coast in California (a favorite weekend past time of ours the 5 years we lived in Northern Cali), secluded beaches in Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii, remote back country lakes and mountain ranges.  We've definitely had our share so of course I can't pick just one! I'll highlight a few and provide a bit of back story for each....

The first shot is from San Diego.  Mark and I had a wonderful hike around the shoreline and were waiting for the sun to set for our typical sunset pictures and relaxation.

The next two are from a trip to Colorado that we took last year.  We went up at the height of the wild flower season and spent the night at a place called the Ice Lakes basin. The upper lake was just above 12k feet and just spectacular!  We had most of the place to our selves once the day hikers headed out and spent a very nice evening cooking dinner and watching the sun set (you'll sense a theme soon:) )

The next 3 are from our trip to Germany and Switzerland.  These were all from the Switzerland part of our trip and actually happen to be from one specific hike (amazing huh??).  The first is obviously the Matterhorn - how can you mistake that?  The second is from the Rifflberg Hotel area.  We were there off season so there was no one up there which made it even more beautiful.   The last one is from the end of our hike - the Gornergrat Glacier.  These areas are particularly romantic for us for a few reasons.  First, it was our first trip together overseas.  Second, it was just the two of us out on the slope hiking.   Third, it was the last trip before we found out we were expecting our first child (so we probably weren't alone on that hike:) ).

The last set is from our most recent trip to California when I was 18 weeks pregnant.  It was the most amazing trip - 3 days, 2 nights out in the back country of Yosemite National Park.  Yosemite is special to use because we went on some of the our first backpack trips together in the back country there.  Now that we don't live there we relish any trip that we get that gives us the opportunity to shoulder our packs again and get lost for while - this time with baby in tow (well, in utero at least..).