Camping in the Redwoods...

After our adventure at Six Flags, we headed north to go camping for a few days. It took us about 5 hours from home, but it was well worth the drive! This trip was to the Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the Burlington campground. The best part of driving up was the closer we were to the the campground, the cooler it became!

This is the view from our campsite...

Setting up camp...

Being in the redwoods meant there were many trees in our campsite to play around, including a stump to play in.

We were able to have campfires the nights we were there, a favorite time...

Stumps also make great climbing structures...

This campground is located right next to the visitors center for the state park and it's a very active center during the peak months. The first morning we were there we went on a 45 min guided walk where she talked about the trees being the ultimate survivors when it came to dealing with the elements. We learned a lot and the boys had a good time as well.

Then we headed out on our own walk and found the river. Something about the river and rocks, they must be thrown in!

It was cool to see all the wild blackberry bushes everywhere...

Getting to walk into the trees was quite a cool thing, this one had been hollowed out by fire, but still stands tall.

After some lunch we decided to hit the tourist stops before the weekend crowds came in.

First we went and drove through a tree...

They also had some neat play houses you could explore...

Then we drove to a place that we thought had fun information about Big Foot, but it turned out that it was just the name of the store. They did have some beautifully carved redwood pieces, including this playhouse...

Then we went to confusion hill and become more confused as to why we were there. They had an excursion train that took you into the trees, but the almost $30 for all of us to ride was a bit steep. They had this cool shoe house, from the old nursery rhyme.

We headed back toward camp and stopped at the One-Log House...

The kitchen...

There were two skinny twin beds in the middle section, then the living room in the back.
They were so excited!

This is the grandfather tree...

Next we headed to the Founder's Grove to walk the 1/2 mile trail. This is a great place to see some of the really large trees. It hasn't been logged like some of the other places we had been.

There are also a bunch of fallen trees in the founder's grove, just as interesting and amazing as seeing the ones that are standing.

Then we headed over to the Eternal Tree House built in the stump of a cut tree. All the trees surrounding it are growing out of the cut stump.

We saw a lot of beautiful carvings, but this bench was a favorite.

That evening we went to the visitor's center for a campfire and listened to a talk about the birds in the area. It was also a lot of fun and interesting. Keith and Cody participated up front a couple of times as she needed helpers to demonstrate things or to get a laugh.

We had a bit of a rough night with Cody getting sick, but in the morning he was fine. Our sleeping bags, however, were not. So we had to cut our camping trip short by a day.

We did still make it to the beach as planned, and promised, making for a late night home, but totally worth the time.

We finally found a beach and at the entrance of the park they had this skeleton of a humpback whale.

So we had a quick bite in the van then walked across to the beach.

They couldn't wait to play, SO Excited!

After getting beaten about by the water for a bit we packed back into the car to search out Glass Beach in Fort Bragg. Back in the 50-60's this was a public dump, finally in 67' the realized this wasn't the best of places to dump all the trash and cleaned it up the best they could. But as things go, they couldn't clean it all up, especially all the broken bottles and such. They say it's a favorite place for divers because of all the treasures out in the water, including several cars.

So with the decades that have past since they quit dumping, the glass that was left has been washed over with the sand and water to the point that it's smooth and beautiful. At first glance it looks like small pebbles, but as you get close and look around, it's actually pieces of glass.
You can see the shiny pieces here...

There are also things embedded in the rocks, we thought at first these were spark plugs, but can't be sure.

It's a rocky beach that has lots of pools, we found this guy hanging out as well.

Shells on the rock walls...

The ocean, oh how we will miss you!

From the beach, we were about 4 hours from home. Around hour 2, Keith started to feel crumby and finally had to let me drive the last hour or so. After a good sleep and some rest the next day he was feeling better, and luckily Ty and I came out okay!

So now we sit today, after breezing through another week, with one week before schools starts.