8/25/13

Sand and Trees.....Lots of trees!!

 
 
 A few weeks ago we took a little trip up the coast to the Redwoods.  Let me start off this post by warning you about the amount of tree pictures.  The redwoods are truly an amazing and spectacular site; however, looking at these pictures makes me realize how hard they are to describe via photograph.  This is one of those places that you definitely need to see with your own eyes to appreciate their grandeur.
 We left Wednesday morning and drove up to our property on Lake Shasta to meet with our architect.  From there we headed west toward the coast.  We followed the Trinity river for most of it, and it was really beautiful. Very remote and some questionable (lots of pot growers up in these neck of the woods) little shanty towns along the way.
 We decided to stay in a hotel, in Eureka, because we brought Nala with us, and we didn't do a lot of research about the campgrounds beforehand.  We found a nearby beach and let the kids (and dog) explore and run around for a little while. 
 My kiddos LOVE the beach, and playing in the waves (even though the water is pretty cold). 
 Typical picture of Noah - wet from the water and hands FULL of "treasures" he has discovered.  This beach had lots of big (broken) shells, sand dollars and crab carcasses (I think Noah has a few of each of those items in his "Costco dog fingers" - what we call Noah's cute little chubby hands).

 Leave only footprints and take only memories. :)   
Oops, we left a little more than footprints (so did Nala).
 
That night we went to dinner at a lumberjack cookhouse.  It's one of the last cookhouses left in the west (per Wikipedia).  They serve you family style, on long tables, with lots of food.  Kind of a touristy place, but the food was decent, and it was fun to look at all the old lumber jacking memorabilia.
  
The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel (another bonus of staying at a hotel) and headed up Hwy 101 toward Redwood National park. Hwy 101 is amazing! 
 Since we had the kids with us, we knew we had to do little hikes (there are lots of hikes that take half or a full day around here) with a big impact. 
So our first stop was to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove.
  
Noah liked the hollow trees, if you can't guess from all the pictures of him inside the trees. 

 I know I mentioned this before, but pictures just don't do this place justice.  I had a hard time figuring out how to capture the size of these giants. You feel so small and insignificant in these forests.
 We became tree-huggers while at the Redwoods.
 Perfect spot for a small person to perch.
 Another small person.
 Yet another small'ish person.
 This was a good hike. Short (2 miles round trip), variety of redwoods (hollow, fused, giant, etc.), lots of berry varieties to eat along the way (Noah kept telling us they were all poisonous, but I overhead a park ranger explaining all the berry types and that they were all edible, so Grant and I tasted most of them). 
 I spy Adam, do you?  Hint: he has an orange hat on.  We were trying to show perspective.



 Me, trying to show perspective again.  The conversation usually went like this (Adam and I reversing roles quite often):
Summer: "Holy cow, that one is enormous."
Shoot a few pictures of the enormous tree.
Summer: "Man, it's doesn't look as big in the picture."
Adam: "Go stand by it to give it some perspective."
Summer:  "Still doesn't look as big on the camera."
 I think the kids crawled in every tree that had any sort of hole in it.

 Adam said, "I bet everyone that walks thru here gets a picture doing this (he proceeds to climb up the two trees)". Yep, we got a picture of him doing "that" too.
 The wanted to try too.


 There were quite a few fallen trees as well, which were just as impressive. 
 Another reason why you feel insignificant in these forests.  Can you imagine being there when one of those giants fall to the ground?! 

End of the hike.  
Great way to introduce ourselves the these massive trees.  
Next we went to Fern Canyon.  I'll save those for the next post. 

6 comments:

bethany said...

SO cool! I want to see those trees now. Your kids looked like they had a great time. PS put up pics of your kitchen PLEASE.

Jessica said...

Oh so fun! We wanted to take the kids a couple of years ago (when we were still in Utah-a little closer) but never made it. And maybe I missed something along the way...property at Lake Shasta and architect...building a cabin or something?

Summer said...

Yes, we are in the very beginning stages of building a cabin. Nervous and excited about it.

Mary said...

Wow! What a beautiful vacation. I miss California already! Keep dragging your kids around the state and take pictures of all the big trees you can find (before they all burn down, ahem).

The Yoder's Five said...

Hold up---a lake cabin?!?!?? NO WAY. Feel free to come stay at our house while we go stay at yours and use your boat! Haha!

The redwoods are something I'd really like to see someday. And I would end up taking 3x the amount of pictures, I'm sure.

Summer said...

No kidding. The entire state is basically on fire.