Glamping Anniversary Trip at El Capitan Canyon

Glamping! What is that? Well, glamping is a mesh of two words, glamorous and camping!

Last year, my boyfriend, Alex, suggested glamping for our 10-year anniversary and I thought it was the perfect idea. Originally I wanted to do the”real” camping where you hike and pitch a tent with no bathrooms. I quickly came to the realization that we both had zero experience camping and no idea on how to “rough it” in the wilderness!

So with that thought, glamping was our best choice! With glamping, we still got the camping experience like cooking our meals by the fire, being one with nature, and hiking, but making the experience more enjoyable by sleeping on a comfortable bed inside, having a fridge to store our food, and having easy access to the bathroom.

Onto finding a glamping location! Our first choice was Treebones Resort in Big Sur, CA. What first caught our attention were the cool yurts! If you haven’t seen what a yurt looks like, do a quick Google search and you’ll see why they’re awesome looking. They look like a huge, circular tent, but inside are beds, a living room area, and a cool skylight up top to see the starry night sky. Sadly, by the time we looked for availabilities, they were all booked for the month of December. We decided last minute too because we weren’t sure what we wanted to do, so that was our fault.

We didn’t give up that easily and we researched more glamping options in California and found our second choice, El Capitan Canyon in Santa Barbara, CA! They also had the cool yurts and it was available, but we changed our minds and went with the cabin instead. Why didn’t we choose the yurts? One small factor is the bathroom. With the cabin, we had a private bathroom inside, but the yurts didn’t have one. We would’ve had to walk there and it was a shared bathroom situation. What if we had a bathroom emergency in the middle of the night? Would you have made it, still half asleep? I wouldn’t have! If you gotta go, you gotta go~ ! Another reason, it was a shorter drive to Santa Barbara than driving to Big Sur.

At El Capitan Canyon, Alex and I stayed for 3 days and 2 nights glamping. We chose a cabin with a queen-size bed, perfect for 2 and it even had a cool loft area. The loft area was great, especially for kids. But if you’re petite like me, it was a fun little spot to hang out in. The cabin also came with a mini-fridge, microwave, coffeemaker, linens, towels, and heating controls to set a comfortable temperature in the room. Outside, our porch we had chairs and a table to sit and enjoy the view of nature, and off to the side of the cabin, we had our own picnic table and grill/firepit.

For our meals, we planned what we were going to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Alex had prepped them before our road trip so the meats marinated all night. Mmm, you know it was going to be tasty! Here’s a good tip for prepping your meals: wrap them up in foil! You can transfer it easily to the grill and it makes for an easy clean up. One thing you can’t forget are the s’mores! That’s an absolute must.

One of the days, we rented bikes from the El Capitan for free and biked our way to the beach just across the way, El Capitan State Beach! We had to sort through a couple of bikes before we found the right one. We biked our way to the beach which was easy because it was all downhill. We bike around the beach and took a break watching the calming ocean water. Now biking back was a workout because of that hill!

Another time, we trekked our way up some hills– it’s my kryptonite! That was my morning workout for the day. After we hiked up the hill, we enjoyed the ocean view and made our way to the llama farm. I was super excited to see the llamas because I read that others were able to feed them. Sadly, there were no feedings happening at the time and it was just the two of us and the animals. It was still nice seeing the happy, fluffy llamas and the donkeys and goats.

One of the days, we drove to Solvang Village, aka, Little Denmark, which was only about a 30-minute drive away. The village was just adorable and I fell in love with it! It feels like you’re in a different county with the Danish architecture everywhere. I would love to go back, or better yet, travel to the Demark!

BONUS!

Here’s the travel vlog of our trip to Santa Barbara!