August Travels, Part 3

After leaving the San Fransisco Bay area, we traveled up to the Redwoods.  We camped there for two nights--one in Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the other in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.  I hadn't been camping since we lived in Texas, so it was surprisingly more pleasant than my last several camping trips.  This time the weather was perfect.

The Redwoods were beautiful!  We took a couple of short hikes and played in the water.  There was so much more we could have done, but sadly, we didn't have enough time because we wanted to drive up the coast of Oregon on our way home.

We wished we had more time to spend driving up the coast.  Like the Redwoods, the Oregon coast is beautiful with so many things to see and do.  We only spent one night in Newport, Oregon before heading home to Aberdeen.  On the way, though, we saw breathtaking beaches, tide pools, and a glass blowing demonstration.  We stopped at some quaint ports and shops, and we toured the Tillamook cheese factory.  

This is called the drive-thru tree, but it's really just a tourist trap.  It costs $5 and only small cars can get through it.  As you can see, we had to walk through it instead.  However, it was entertaining to watch other cars try to squeeze through and hope their car didn't lose some parts.

Setting up camp in Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Eli is happily roasting marshmallows by the campfire.

This was a large banana slug that we saw in the morning. 

This was the base of a fallen redwood tree.  As you can see, it's huge!

This was a short hike that we took while in the Redwoods.  The area is called the Avenue of the Giants.

The hike led to a small stream, so we played in it for a while.

We saw a number of elk in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

This hike is called Fern Canyon, and it is gorgeous.  There are ferns growing all along the canyon walls.  Apparently some of the second movie of Jurassic Park was filmed here. 

The hike was somewhat difficult because there were a lot of downed trees that we had to climb over.  There were also numerous places where we had to walk across boards or trees in order to avoid the water.  Eli fell in the water three times.

Eli and Josh went swimming in the Smith River in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

This is Lone Ranch Beach in Brookings, Oregon.

We stopped at Lone Ranch to see the tide pools.

Here is the Tillamook cheese factory.  It was a bit crowded while we were there, but we got to sample some yummy cheeses.  I had never tried Tillamook's smoked cheddar, which I thought was delicious.  Josh liked their garlic chili pepper cheese.  Eli liked the fudge and ice cream, which Tillamook also makes.

We had so much fun on our trip.  The weather was beautiful and so was the scenery.  We are blessed that Josh can take that much time off from his work!