Our last day of vacation

While we repacked the van once again the kids decorated the sidewalks with the chalk from our vacation package from Heather.  The kids not drawing…Neil and Isaac watched some workers upgrading the façade of the building by “gluing” stones to the front.  It was pretty entertaining and the workers were very kind to answer all the questions my kids could think of.

Our hikes for this last day were at the far north in of the Redwoods.  The first was the Simpson-Reed Grove.  For our drive Ken had helped pick out some books on tape since we could listen to them over the van speakers and everyone can easily hear that way as opposed to one person trying to shout loud enough so the people in the back of the van could hear too.  I don’t remember all the books we got but we did listen to a couple of Ribsy books and the kids loved them.  For a bit of a change we put in How to Eat Fried Worms but didn’t end up listening for very long to due the combination of the content and the windy roads some of us weren’t feeling very good, so we put Ribsy back in and enjoyed that.

This short flat loop was fun because it had signs to read and we were all still amazed at the size of the trees!

It was a little cooler this morning.

Another ginormous fallen tree.

Group picture.

Jessie found a lovely Captain Hook branch which she shared with Neil until he hooked Ken around the neck…that wasn’t so lovely.

Packing around the kids.

This nurse log was pretty neat.

Emma was happy to be out of the sling for a bit.

Trying once again to stretch ourselves around a tree trunk.

The tree bark was so colorful and had so much texture.

Hanging out by another fallen log.  It’s so BIG it looks like we are standing at the bottom of a little sheer cliff! This one had all sort of plant life growing on it.

We were all so excited when we spotted another nurse tree and knew all about it.

Our last hike was equally amazing – Stout Grove.  It was also a bit of a drive and actually on someone's personal property.  There was NO parking here either, but luckily someone was leaving so we didn’t have to go park Big Bertha on the extremely skinny road leading up to the grove.

Emma started out with Mark this time.  The trail starts with a short rather steep hill going down into the grove and then levels out for the loop.

This tree had actually fallen only a month or so before our trip due to some flooding or so much rain that the ground was just super saturated.  And it already had little redwood shoots starting to grow!

Change in drivers for Emma.  Emma loved Jessie’s braid.

At one point in the path you walk between two fallen logs….trees that were next to each other that had fallen in opposite directions.

Group photo.

By now Ken and most of the kids had gone on ahead….and I was busy taking pictures.  I just couldn’t help myself.

I did catch up to Mark and Isaac and we finished the loop together.

And lucky us, for all our slowness we found a banana slug.  And it was gross but cool.

When we made it back up to the car they were having a snack and laughing with Emma.  Spencer was poking twigs into what appeared to be a fairly solid log, but it was actually more like poking something into a piece of styrofoam.

Jessie updated our driving log to 22 hours in the car and crossed out Redwoods or Bust and wrote in Oregon Caves or Bust.  What an amazing trip.  It was worth all the late nights doing research on the hikes, and where to stay, and whether or not we should just rent a huge trailer, and packing and repacking the van and not sleeping in your own bed (although I took my own pillow and that made a huge difference!).  A five star vacation!