Redwood Forest Adventures!! Part 2 -- the rest of the story

We recovered pretty well from the crazy lady experience, the kids were very glad that we reported her to the police, and I think they were glad to all be sleeping in the same tent with us and nobody wandered off on their own the whole trip. They now understand why it's important to have a bathroom buddy and to stay together. Our new campground and site again was right by the bathrooms and the trees were even taller. We drove to the visitor center to see where to go and we were on our way.

We drove on the old horse and buggy road into Crescent City and had to stop to look at some of the huge trees. The kids loved it until #2 got stung and then #4 got stung twice. We checked him and he looked alright, but he was ready to drive all the way back home to Utah. We stopped at Stout Grove and finally got him calmed down enough to agree to go when he got stung again. We quickly took his shirt off and sure enough, a yellow jacket fell out-- it had been caught in his shirt. Now he really did not want to go- so Ryan took the other kids and I stayed with #4 and the twins, they came back and said it was so awsome, Ryan promised #4 a new wii game if he would come. He came very reluctantly, but it was awesome. It was so beautiful, it was just like being on a movie set. The trees were so huge it felt like we were small insects and a big dog could come bounding out at any minute. He had a good time and everyone agreed that if we did nothing else, that walk through Stout Grove was worth the long drive and the misadventures we'd had so far.



We finished the drive into town- it was just beautiful and we had a picnic lunch on an overlook to the ocean. The waves were wild, but it was beautiful and peaceful and spectacular really. Then we drove on down through other parts of the park, we had to stop at one of the beaches it was so pretty and I love the ocean. We were disappointed however, to find out that there was a large swell coming in for a direct hit on the beaches while we were there and it wouldn't be safe to go tide pooling. We were educated on sneaker waves and decided against going into the water. However #5 fell in and got soaked, but we had extra clothes and shoes for him and he liked the idea of being the only one to go into the Pacific Ocean.

We drove on down some more and paid $5 to drive through a tree, but our van was too big, so we just walked under it and got sap dripped on us. Then we were pretty much done for the day and drove back through the forest on the old horse and buggy route the other way. It was spectacular. We let the kids take turns riding up front to stick their heads out and we let them all be unbuckled for most of it which the twins especially loved.

We packed everything up in the morning, ate breakfast and hiked down to a beautiful river beach. The kids found some frogs and stayed mostly dry and threw a lot of rocks in. It was very relaxing. We drove on down through the rest of the park and stopped at Wayside tree and hiked around. It was surreal- lots of moss, greenery and huge trees. We ended at the opposite visitor center, watched a video on the Redwoods and the kids got their Junior Ranger badges and bought their souvenirs. We ate lunch on the beach, read an Indian legend about a girl who turned to stone because she cried about nothing, and watched the waves some more.

Then we drove on down the 101 through Indian country, then more forests, hills, trees, eventually small towns, then vineyards, then bigger towns and finally into Marin County. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge at night into San Francisco, drove along the Embarcadero, pointed out places we used to go when we lived there and the building Ryan worked in. We explained a lot about cities and boats and people and buildings. We decided not to get out and try to find a place to park or anything, but we think it gave our kids a better perspective on what a big city is. Then we drove out across the Bay Bridge to San Ramon where we lived and Ryan worked most the time we were there. It was fun to remember our time together there- having our first baby, Ryan working his first "real" job out of college. The kids got bored looking at our apartments and work places there, but I remember thinking the same thing when my parents would take pictures of there first houses and other stuff. I understand now- guess I'm getting older.

Well, there was no where to camp around there at all, so we just kept on driving, it was all pretty much on the way home anyway. There were probably places around Reno and Tahoe, but by the time we got there it was going to be morning soon, so we just kept on driving- switching off. The kids slept through most of it, we had to wake them to see the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco so it wasn't too bad, but we stopped at a rest area and slept for about 2 hours. We got pulled over in Nevada, because Ryan thought the speed limit was 75, but it was 65 through there- fortunately the kids were all buckled in and the cop let us go when we couldn't find our registration. We had had to stop for the bathroom often throughout the whole trip, and true to form our last stop was at the rest area right before Tooele, Ut at the rest area where the salt flats are. Then it was a 2 hour drive home, where we turned the TV on for the kids and crashed for a couple hours and said-- we're not really home yet!

The kids were great. We listened to a lot of music along the drive and there was plenty to see. We all loved it and would do it again-- but our next road trip will probably be to Colorado or Idaho! :)

Redwood Forest Adventures!! Part 1 - Crazy Lady

We took the week off and drove to see the giant redwoods this week. None of us had ever been, and we were looking forward to it. We had a fabulous time, it was beautiful and well worth the very long drive. We had a great time, we had a few mishaps, but we survived and we are looking forward to our next trip! This is the long version-- you can read the short version on my other blog www.academichomeschooling.blogspot.com.

We packed and got everything ready to go on Monday- we planned on camping so it is a lot of work to get everything ready to go. We knew we wouldn't want to camp more than 3 nights and we needed to be back for everybody's final soccer games on Saturday. So we finally left at 6 a.m. Tuesday morning and drove to Winnemucca, NV and then through the back parts of Oregon. The Tom Tom was great at navigating, sometimes we had trouble believing it because it thought some of the roads we drove on were unpaved, but we found it was pretty accurate and especially helpful finding things around town. There was a lot of construction through Nevada. We saw an overturned dumptruck that had dumped black asphalt across the road in the back ways of southern Oregon. We drove through some very pretty country, then we eventually came out at Klamath Falls which was a very unimpressive run down town. We had a hard time finding a grocery store and then it took us awhile to get on the right road to the Redwoods. We finally did and stopped at a campground down the road that turned out to be closed, so we kept driving til we came to another state campground that was open and right by the Redwood National park and found a campsite right by the bathrooms.

It was about 11 p.m. and we were excited to finally be out of the car and able to lie down, so we pulled out the tent and Ryan started setting it up and we were getting everybody out when some crazy woman with a low cut top that showed a bunch of cleavage came swaggering over and asked what all the screaming was about. We told her there was no screaming and then when she saw all the kids she accused us of stealing them and demanded that we show her pictures of them to prove that they are all ours. We told her, that they are our children, that there was no screaming and that she should go get the camp director if she had a problem. She kept insisting that the kids were not ours and pushed my husband and started asking the kids if we were their parents. Ryan was setting up the tent outside with the older kids, I was in the van with the babies and younger kids. When she started walking toward the van and picking up some of our things, I asked her what she was doing and told her to go away that she was disturbing and scaring the children. One of the twins started to cry really loud and a man came over and we told him what was going on, he had to wrap his arms around her and force her out of our campsite. He said they were just camping over there. Ryan said we are out of here, we loaded everything back up and tried to wake the camp host. He didn't stir, so we drove on down the road and found another campground which we passed in case that crazy lady would follow us. We saw a sign for highway patrol so we drove over there and reported her. The officers said that she was probably coming off of some drugs or medication, and that we did just the right thing by removing ourselves from the situation. The kids were pretty shaken by the experience, but now they understand very well now why they should not run off by themselves and should always have a buddy when they go to the bathroom.

The campground we ended up staying in was called Jedediah Smith Campground and it was right in the redwood forest-- it was so nice, we were right by the bathrooms which also had showers for 50 cents for 5 minutes which makes such a difference when you're camping. There were a lot more people staying there too which was good. The crazy lady was quickly put in the back of our minds as an occurance to learn from but really would not affect our trip.

More to come......