Day Six

On the road again... going home.  This time, we drove through the day.  The Northern California coast is so beautiful!  And as we drove up it, we went through the Redwoods, too!  Our first leg out of Fort Bragg was quite twisty and just as we came out of it, we needed to stop for poor Cadi who was sick.  It just so happened, that was 1/4 mile from the "World famous drive-thru tree", so we thought it would be a good time for a little break.  We paid the $5 fee, got in line and then Ryan jumped out to race ahead and take video as I drove my car through the tree!  I'm not putting the video on here, but I did take some stills from the video and I'll post those.











After driving through the tree, we looked around the little gift shop and then let the girls play.















There was this other cool tree there and I liked the pic even better in b/w:


After our little break, we got back in our car and kept on going.  The rest of the way wasn't nearly as windy and there were no more queasy tummies.  The drive was long, but pretty easy and we got home just fine late that night.  Unfortunately, the wonderful weather on the coast didn't follow us.  We found out that it had been over 100 degrees that day and our poor empty house was 91 degrees when we walked in!  Thank goodness for A/C!  And thankfully, the temps went down after we got here.  So maybe the coastal weather did follow us home after all! ;)

Day Five

Our last full day of camping.  Debi had to leave a little after breakfast and before she left, we took some group photos. 









Oh but we forgot to include our little forest neighbors who camped with us, ate with us, hung out in our cars...  Yeah, these guys:



Cute, yes.  But pests for sure.  It was entertaining to watch Joe chase them away from our cooking area on occasion.  And it was exciting to try to get one out of Ruth's minivan.  But we had no problem leaving these guys at the campground when we left on Saturday! lol

After Debi left, we headed down to MacKerricker beach to watch the waves and play on the rocks/beach.















Notice the seals on the rocks behind the kids?  We watched some of them playing in the waves, too.  Cute!













We decided to walk up the beach a little ways.  Some of us took the high road:





While others took the low road:





There were some people flying kites there.  They let the kids fly one and even gave one to Jared!







There was some other excitement going on around this time, too.  I don't have the video of it yet, that is on David's camera, but I can give you the run down.  Cadi was down by the waves and lost a flip flop.  She started to go after it, but incase you couldn't tell from the pics, this is NOT a beach where you can go into the water!  She was about a foot away from it, but a huge wave was about to crash on her and she had to make a quick decision.  At the last moment, she chose to live, at the encouragement of Ryan and Tom who were yelling at her to come back!  While, she was glad to be alive, and I think she realizes that it was the best deicision, she was absolutely crushed to have lost her "favorite flip flop".  That would explain this photo:



I'm just glad that she lost it at the end of our trip and not the beginning since we were wearing our flip flops into the showers. ;)

After lunch, David and Teresa took Cadi and Esther to see Glass Beach.  Rori and Jared were napping and the rest of us were being lazy, so we hung out at camp and played Phase 10.  Ruth was ahead the entire time, until Ryan swept in at the last moment and won it!  He's such a meanie.  So much for being a gentleman. ;)  It was fun though!

After the Glass Beach group came back and the little kids woke up, we went back to MacKerricker Beach to check out the tide pools since the tide was on it's way out.  We drove over to the end of the beach and walked out to the pointe where there are tons of rocks and tide pools.





















We found some really cool stuff!  Like these two crabs fighting:



These starfish:






Tom showing the kids a hermit crab:












And then it was back to camp for dinner.  All of the siblings not living at home took turns being in charge of meals.  The other three boys contributed by helping with clean up.  Here is the dish crew at work, they did a great job:





And then we had our final campfire, with lots of S'mores and Wiifms:




I was sad it was our last night, we had such a great week together!  We definitely want to go camping together again! :)