Big Trees and Tide Pools

We bid farewell to Aunt Debbie’s house and headed north on US 101 in search of cooler weather, beaches, and giant trees.  But what should have been a 6 hour drive turned into something closer to 8 1/2 hours thanks to bumper to bumper traffic going through the town of Santa Rosa (seriously people, does nobody work on Friday’s anymore!) and a long delay caused by a semi driver who didn’t believe the warning signs on a sharp corner and tipped over his rig on a narrow two lane bridge!  

Our home base for several days was a fun little RV park tucked away in a coastal forest in Trinidad California.  Julie had been itching to take the girls to see some tide pools, and we had insider knowledge (thanks Gianni) that the tide pools at Trinidad State Beach were some of the best in the area.  Luck would have it that low tide that first morning was at 7:30 a.m. so we loaded up as soon as everyone was awake and hit the road.  The beach was as awesome as advertised and we saw starfish in many colors, crabs, sea anemones, mussels, and barnacle covered rocks.  We also chased birds, found a neat arch carved in a cliff, and got our feet in the water.  

 

The next day we drove the Avenue of the Giants which is a scenic route paralleling the 101 south of Eureka.  We explored several giant redwood groves - two via short hikes and the rest via the van windows.  We are learning that the girls are typically good for one or two short hikes on any given day before they get “bored”, or “tired”, or lose interest in whatever it is that Julie and I want to do.  We did convince them to stop at the visitor center at Humboldt Redwoods State Park though, and they had a lot of fun with a scavenger hunt where they had to find nine banana slug pictures that had been hidden around the center and then unscramble all the letters to make a special word - spoiler alert the word was decompose - in order to win a prize.  This kept them all busy for long enough that we actually got to look at and read about many of the exhibits!

We had a reservation to visit Fern Canyon inside of Redwoods National Park the following day but we decided to start off a little closer to the campsite and went to Agate Beach to look for cool rocks.  We spent most of our time playing in a small creek that ran into the ocean.  The girls built a dam with rocks, sticks, and mud and had a great time floating small pieces of driftwood.  We did manage to sneak away one adult at a time and had a little luck finding two small agates.  

Fern Canyon was exactly as advertised - one of the most impressive places in the park - and I'm sure none of the pictures we took actually do it justice.  It starts with a short walk from the hiking area (after navigating an extremely long, slow, windy, steep, narrow, and bumpy dirt road) to the mouth of a stream that winds it's way back up an increasingly steep canyon with walls covered in several types of ferns and other fauna.  Walking along, and sometimes in, the creek is the only way to go and we were glad we were prepared with the appropriate footwear!  The water was quite cold, which Haddie loved and the other two tolerated.  Haddie was stoked to find the first (and second and third) banana slugs of the trip. The girls had fun racing leaves and whatever else they could find down the creek.  A short climb up some switchbacks led us up the canyon wall and to a nice footpath leading us back to the parking area via the forest.  

 

Our last full day at this campground included another trip to Trinidad State Beach for the girls (I stayed back and cleaned the trailer) in the morning and an afternoon of movies while Julie ran into town and did laundry.  That evening saw Julie, Haddie, and Reagan head back to Agate Beach while Palmer and I stayed back to play at the playground - she also got a giant ice cream sandwich from the camp store!  Julie was lucky enough to climb up the cliff twice with Reagan on her back thanks to a “potty break” and the only bathroom being at the top of the cliff.

We pulled out the next morning and headed north, but also inland, heading towards the Crater Lake area.  I spent an hour at one of the beaches just outside of Trinidad to kill some time while the girls stopped off at Trees of Mystery where they saw more big trees, climbed between some on rope bridges, took a gondola ride, and cruised around the gift shop.

We spent one night at Lake Selmac near Selma, Oregon (since the crater lake campground didn’t have any earlier availability and our Trinidad campground was unable to extend us for a night).  We ate s’mores and played at the playground and even got on the paddle board for a few minutes - this campground was amazing (minus the mosquitoes)!