Busy Day in the Redwoods

Here's one on a scenic byway

After a great night's sleep, we went to the pancake breakfast this morning at Crescent City KOA.  It's a nice campground if you're ever in this neck of the woods.  Clean, quiet, giant trees...  And we headed out this morning to see more of them.


We went south on 101 to Ladybird Johnson grove at Redwoods National Park.  We already had on jackets, but it was so foggy and misty that we dug extra layers out of the car and added them.  The grove has a 1-mile loop through the redwoods.  Here are some of our favorite sights.

Tall trees in the mist

Rebecca explores a hollow tree

Flowers beside the path

Kids on a log

Moss and ferns

Inside a giant 

After that hike, we went to find a picnic place and stopped by Elk Meadow.  It's well named, because we spotted these:

Elk parade

After lunch, we went on another short hike to find Trillium Falls.  We went through more giant trees, but this time we were the only people on the path.

Jeff and Rebecca are in this photo.

The falls were very pretty, and we also spotted some new wildlife near the stream!

Bridge near the falls

Forest-colored frog

Banana slug!

That's Rebecca's hand with a different slug.

Lots of snails in the woods.

So that was awesome!  There were also some millipede type bugs that Rebecca liked but I didn't take their pictures.  And Marjorie and Jeff shot some video with MHZ as Princess Leia and Rebecca as an Ewok, but I haven't seen it yet.

Next we headed back to camp for pie-iron pizzas and grilled corn for dinner, then back into town to look for seals.

Which we totally found!

This one swam over to see if we would throw him some food.

These are some LAZY seals.

We also walked on some rocks at the end of the pier and looked with the binocs for whales, but no dice on that one.  We did see lots of sea birds, including pelicans.  On the way back,  Jeff noticed some starfish on the rocks of the jetty and I decided we could easily get there.

Don't worry, he put it back down.

The tide seemed to be coming in though, so we didn't stay too long.  We're hoping to find some more tidepools tomorrow on our drive up the coast!

Day 12 - we made it to the ocean!

Today we stopped as we were leaving Redding to check out the Sundial Bridge. It was pretty cool!We walked across it and then back.  It was already pretty hot at 9:00 a.m. so we were surprised to see that people were already staking out their spots for fireworks in a big grassy field.

The bridge deck in made of glass.

We went west out of Redding on CA 199, which went over several mountain ridges on the way to the coast.  We were really looking forward to seeing Willow Creek - Home of Bigfoot.

On the way, we stopped at this beautiful roadside rest area to stretch our legs.

Really cold water though.

When we finally got to Willow Creek, we could tell it was the Bigfoot Capitol.  For example, this is the Ace Hardware:

Fabulous "History of Bigfoot" mural

Did you know that Bigfoot helped the settlers?

Bigfoot with native peoples

Bigfoot and the first settlers

Bigfoot helps chop down trees??

And put up houses?

We also made our way to this place:

The Bigfoot collection room at the museum.

One of the Bigfoot displays.

After picnic lunch in a city park (with an extremely persistent squirrel) we kept heading west over more mountains until we could finally see the ocean! 

Beach at Redwoods National Park

Look, we had to put on sweatshirts!

After some beach exploration, we came to Crescent City for the night.  We got settled into the cabin and got some groceries.  Rebecca rented a recumbent bike, and after a little frustration, figured out how to ride it.

Then we cooked a campfire dinner of hotdogs (spicy brats for the adults) and mac & cheese.

What's in the Dutch oven?

Cinnamon rolls for dessert!

We decided not to go see fireworks, but we can hear them.  It's pretty chilly here - I can see my breath.  I'm heading back to the cozy cabin for some rest before we go see redwoods tomorrow!

Day 11 to Redding CA

We got up this morning and unpacked the WHOLE van so everything could get packed in it again.  That's what happens when you take out all the stuff on the bottom layer while camping.  Things got packed up pretty smoothly though!  It helped that the kids could go to the petting farm, go swimming and generally mess  around together while the adults were cleaning and packing.

We drove part way with our friends, hit an awesome burger joint for lunch (Hula's in Escalon) and then headed up the road to Redding, CA.

Our retro-hip hotel for the night.

A random cool statue on the way!

A bento box dinner for Rebecca.

For dinner, we visited a Japanese place.  Rebecca tried everything in her Bento box, and liked the miso soup, spring roll, tempura veggies, salad and teriyaki chicken.  The pickled ginger was "yuck", the California roll was "too chewy and also spicy".  We warned her off the wasabi.
The sushi rolls were fabulous!

We're heading through Sasquatch territory tomorrow!

Spider roll & Kobe roll

Days 9 and 10 in Yosemite National Park

We had a great couple of days at Yosemite Pines RV Park.  Rebecca enjoyed the petting farm, pool and playground.  We all hiked their nature trail.  And out yurt was very comfy - although HOT during the day!  It cooled off at night. And my friends from the SanFrancisco area had the yurt right next to us.

We spent the first day here loafing - sleeping in, doing laundry, swimming in the pool - while waiting for them to arrive.  They came bearing all kinds of delicious fixings for some of the best campfire food ever!  We made foil packet dinners with your choice of salmon or chicken; tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, onions, summer squash; and pesto or teriyaki sauce.  And of course, s'mores for later.  (Too busy cooking and eating to take photos though.)

We got a kick out of the wild turkey that lives in camp.  We saw her and her chicks every day.  Sometimes right under our picnic table!
Rebecca went to the petting farm each morning to help feed the animals.   She even picked up a chicken one day.

She had 6 chicks.

On Monday, we headed into Yosemite to see More Famous Stuff.  First we went to Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for a hike to see the Grizzly Giant and the California Tunnel Tree.

Whoa, giant pinecones!

Hiking down the path.

A fallen tree

The Fallen Giant has been there a long time.

Grizzly Giant tree

Snack break in the grove.

The California tunnel tree.

When we got done looking at "boring trees that aren't that big" according to one boy I overheard, we had a dilemma.  We hadn't made it into the Yosemite Valley yet.  Where the Famous Stuff is located.  But we had already eaten lunch and it was about an hour to get there.  Yosemite is HUGE!  So we decided to go for it, and were glad we did.  Seeing the Curry Village campground in the valley also made me glad we didn't get a camp reservation there.  It was totally crazy with thousands of visitors, people wandering into the road, people on bikes, unattended children...  

But the scenery was pretty amazing.

We had lunch at the Curry Village buffet, which was quite yummy.  We had been seeing these small ground squirrels all day... but we were still surprised to see one under our table.

See, cute baby squirrels!

Holy cow, there's a squirrel under the table!

We finally got back to our camp around bedtime for the kiddies.  It was a great day!

You would not believe how long these two could talk on a car trip.
Try it sometime.

Day 8 to Groveland

We left LeeVining this morning and headed over the Tioga Pass into Yosemite National Park.  The drive was pretty easy compared to some other roads we've done.  Yosemite seemed pretty crowded, but it is a holiday weekend. According to Marjorie, everything at Yosemite looks like a postcard.

The first place we stopped was Tolumne Meadows visitor center.  We went for a short hike to see Soda Springs.  It was so refreshing to have temperatures in the 60s instead of the 100s!  Rebecca wanted to put on a sweatshirt.  Along the way we saw some wildlife:

A herd of young bucks.

A ground-dwelling rodent.

Soda Spring was pretty cool - the water bubbles out of the ground and it's naturally carbonated.  According to the signs there, scientists don't know why it's bubbly.  John Muir and friends found it in the 1800s.  The meadows area also has a cabin and many other trails.  We saw a string of pack horses heading out to supply a camp somewhere.

This part of the spring is in a building.

And here's the rest of it.

The scenery here in the meadow area was just beautiful so we took our time on the 1-mile hike.

Lots of fish in this water!

After driving a little longer, we came upon Lake Tenaya so we had to stop again.

And Rebecca had to get in it!

The water was pretty cold, but really clear and beautiful.  There was one family swimming, but most people just stopped to admire the lake.

Time to get back in the car :(

Now we're doing laundry at Yosemite Pines RV Park in Groveland.  (The internet is stronger in the laundry room.) We got here too early to check in, and Jeff wanted to get an oil change for the van.  We ended up driving over the mountain to get to Sonora for an oil change at Wal-Mart.  That's all I'm going to say about that.  It was not a fun afternoon.  But when we got back to camp, we cooked our breakfast from Moab and had pancakes, eggs and bacon for dinner with grapes and juice.  Rebecca road her scooter a little and they both drew in their journals.  Now the girls are in the yurt and getting ready for bed.  And we're still enjoying having a little chill in the air.

I'll post pictures of the campground tomorrow.  Hopefully, we'll be joined by Jen Hlavin and family. They planned to come out today but their kids are sick.