Trip: Leg 3 Redwood Forest

Wed Aug 3: So we headed out early from Susanville. We were headed for the Coastal Redwoods. We took the shortest route (as the crow flies). But it ended up being the worst road known to man. Maybe that's why it didn't even show up on some of the maps. Luckily we had our GPS and Eric's good driving skills to keep us alive. You just had to laugh when you were traveling down a horribly windy, impossibly bumpy road at about 15 miles an hour and then would see a sign that said "Rough Road Ahead" -- what did they call the road we had been on? We spent hours in the middle of nowhere, crawling at a snails pace but we didn't give up hope and eventually we made our way back to civilization.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving through The Avenue of the Giants. This was one of the highlights of the whole trip for most of us. The kids had such a fun time hiking and exploring in the forest. The size of the Redwood trees...the intense green color...the thick ferns...just took our breath away. If you haven't seen it -- I say add it to your To Do list. Unfortunately all the slow back country roads meant we only had a few hours to spend in the forest, but we made the most of them. A second "unfortunately" is that the deep, thick forests means that little light gets to the forest floor...which is beautiful and all but it means that my pictures all look like it is 8:00 at night when it was really 2:00 in the afternoon. They are either grainy, dark or blown out because of the flash. But I'll share a few of them anyway. Professional photographers....just look away.

The 4 kids. Can you guess who was pouting?

Renae playing in the ferns. I loved the ferns!! So different from Arizona or Idaho forests

The kids loved to have Eric shine his flashlight up inside the hollow trunks

I think Colby would have been happy if we had left him there for the rest of the week

Mason enjoyed reading about all the tree trivia

A look heavenward up one of the biggest of the trees -- around 360 feet tall.

Renae and I posing by the roots of a fallen tree. Amazing.

After our Redwood excursion we continued up the California coast to a little town called Fortuna. We chose it simply because it was the nearest town and had the cheapest motels of any of the surrounding cities. Yep, it was a cheap motel but it did the job. We had dinner in a little Mexican restaurant that was decent and then just collapsed into bed. A long day of driving and forest exploring will sure tucker ya out.