After leaving Nick and Abby's house, we headed on up the coast to see these big trees we'd come all the way across the country to admire. We decided to push through and drive almost all the way so we could stay in one place for a few days. Along the way, we started to notice the landscape changing and finally we caught site of a tiny grove of trees… in the middle of a town park. Hey, it still counts and we needed a good pitstop for bathrooms and a place to run off some energy!! We were pretty impressed and Adele assured us they tasted as good as they looked.
Even though we pulled into our bungalow late, Farmer John was still up at the crack of dawn and found a cool place right across the road to visit. Unluckily for me, the skylight in our room made it seem like noon as soon as the sun came up, which meant that Adele (who was NOT a nice sleeper on this trip!) was up, which meant that everyone was up! So off we went on a little hike to see these magnificent trees.
On the bright side of things, the morning light was awesome for pictures! Ava's about 12 ft up here and it took some maneuvering to get her there but I'm glad we did.
Hurry! Take a picture of the rare banana slug that lives on the Redwoods! Except as we came to realize over the course of our visit, they are not rare at all. Adele wasn't that impressed with them anyway.
Elias was excited that he could reach the branches of this little one. After spending a few days around these trees, we now know that this really is a tiny tree and Eli was lucky to be able to grab a branch at all since most of them didn't start for at least 40 ft!
After our hike, we jumped in the car and tried to get down to the ocean. After one failed attempt to climb down a very deceiving slope that was way too wild, we found a town with a civilized set of stairs down to the water. The kids quickly took off to explore.
Out of all the things on the shore to collect, Nathan chose dead crab body parts. He was quite upset when we refused to let him bring them all home. Yuck.
John loved the boats anchored out in the water and kept letting me know that someday he will live near the ocean. Hum…
While everyone else was off exploring, I watched Adele make sand tracks with her bum scooting.
And eat sand and use driftwood as a teether. She loved the freedom and feeling of the sand on her legs. I did draw the line when she started eating handfuls of it though.
Finally, I strapped Adele on and joined everybody climbing and exploring. This was a highlight of the entire trip for the kids and they still talk about jumping around on the big rocks.
Thank goodness none of the wild artifacts made it home with us, but the kids loved them while they were there. We saw starfish, lots of sand fleas, a sea cucumber, tons of hermit crabs, a few California sea lions and lots of birds.
But, eventually all good things must come to an end. And then we had to face the hundreds of stairs going up from the shore that were so easy going down. If we lived near the California coast, I'm pretty sure we'd all have killer calf muscles. And Adele would probably have a very upset belly from eating all that sand!
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