Wednesday

Wednesday morning we drove to the top of the Prairie Creek section of the Redwoods to the Ah-Pah trail first.  The forest was all misty on the drive up, so picturesque.  We had since opened a few more of our travel package surprises from Aunt Heather which included some toy water guns; this morning on the drive we opened some blow up swords….a huge hit!  Hee-hee.  And surprise!  This trail actually had a sign!

“The short Ah Pah Trail follows the path of a logging road that was removed in the 1990s to reduce erosion. Interpretive signs along the path describe the removal process.  Road removal is a major ongoing effort at Redwood National and State Parks, and over a hundred miles of logging roads have been removed since the 1970s.

The path descends gently through exceptionally nice redwood uplands, with large and varied trees on a steep hillside. The hillside has been re-graded to remove most traces of the road. It's hard to tell that there was once a road here, but if you look closely you might notice a wide strip with no big trees. Instead, small trees and brush line some parts of the trail. As a result, you don't feel quite as enveloped in the redwood forest as on a normal trail.  The trail ends at a nice redwood grove.”

This trail wasn’t very long, but still nice.  It felt a lot more like one of the mountain climbs we made with Grandpa Fry as far as vegetation goes.  The trail also passed through one really awesome burned out tree and had some other trees with some neat patterns and colors in the bark. 

There were also quite a few trees that fallen over the trail. So that section of the tree had been removed and we tried to count the rings…a little harder than it sounds.

Mark and I (and Emma) were having so much fun taking pictures and looking around that Ken and the rest of the crew reached the end of the trail and started back before we caught up to them.  Neil took this picture of them at the end of the trail.

Next up…lunch.  We jumped back in the car and headed down to the Visitor Center.  There was only enough parking there for about 8 cars (who designed that!!) or you had to go all the way back out to the road to park, a good 200 yards or so.  Well we weren’t really in the mood to pack kids and all the stuff for lunch all that way so we just squeezed in behind someone else who had not parked in a parking space thinking we could easily check for a parking spot after lunch.

While we waited for Ken to find us a spot to eat Jessie decorated Abbie hair with some wildflowers from this pretty field where there we supposed to be herds of deer.

We didn’t find any open picnic table so we just ate at the little amphitheater we found.  Lunch was tuna and crackers with crescent rolls, string cheese, yogurt and and a few leftover snacks from the previous days.

After the kids had mostly finished eating they had a ball giving primary talks and impromptu speeches, mostly quoting Studio C, from the small pulpit at the front.   With a little help from Jessie this was Isaac’s first public speech: "My name is Isaac.  I'm super cute.  I need a diaper change.  I like trains....and diaper changes.”  He did an amazing job projecting his voice so we could hear him on the back row.  We were laughing so hard.  Luckily Ken recorded it so we can enjoy it for a long time.

Then we had a little selfie session while we finished the last of the peanut M&M’s and cleaned up.

When we got back to the van, us and the car in front of us had a lovely surprise – a parking ticket!  Ahhhhh….so obnoxious!  I tried not to let it ruin to much of my day….so we decided that as long as we had already gotten the ticket we might as well leave the van there and go hiking because they couldn’t very well give us another one.

So to finish this post on a good note I love this “sibling hug moment” I got on film while we returned lunch stuff to the car and got out the snacks and packs for another hike.