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)!

 

Yosemite National Park

After returning from San Francisco we spent another day at Aunt Debbie's.  Julie’s cousin stopped by and the girls loved swimming and playing with her daughter all day. 

The next morning we loaded up the bikes and ourselves and headed out again. Although unimpressed with the 3 hr drive, the girls perked up when we got far enough into the park to see the valley and all it's splendor.  We stopped at an overlook for our first views of Half Dome and El Capitan before finishing the ascent into the canyon and stopping at Bridalveil Falls.  We decided to do the short hike up to the falls and the girls had fun scrambling on all the rocks.  

On our way back to the car we stopped once again to play on the rocks near the creek - this time the older two got a little braver and ventured further out.  As Julie and I were yelling to Palmer that she "had gone far enough" we realized she couldn't hear us over the sound of the stream and could only watch as she stepped on a slippery spot and slid into the river, plunging below the surface for a brief second before popping up with a shocked look on her face.  I reached out and pulled her to shore - she was very cold and very scared, but otherwise unscathed.  When we got back to the car we changed into dry clothes and headed to Curry Village to check into our hotel room, happy that the lesson of the day hadn't been worse than it was.  The girls became very aware of water safety and pointed out dangerous and safe swimming locations for the rest of our stay. 

After getting all checked in to our cool room (complete with loft) at the Stoneman House, we boarded a shuttle towards the main visitor center to grab dinner and wait for our ranger led floor tour to start.  The tour took place in an open air cart being pulled by a semi truck, with the ranger telling us stories about all the most famous bits of Yosemite.  We found climbers on the face of El Capitan, looked back at the valley from tunnel view lookout, and learned the native names for all the water falls over the course of the two hour tour.  We highly recommend this tour to anybody who visits Yosemite.

The next morning was the start of our last day in the park and we decided to ride our bikes around the valley floor.  The girls did amazing on what turned out to be close to 8 miles of riding.  We went to the visitor center and earned junior ranger badges, hiked the loop out to lower Yosemite falls, and went to the sweet shop in the historic Ahwahnee hotel.  Upon making it back to our car we found out the only two places to get food had 30 minute lines to place an order!  We decided to make do with what we had in the cooler and made sandwiches, loaded up the bikes, and hit the road back.  Before getting back to the trailer we had an excellent dinner at Market Tavern in Stockton.