For my birthday this year I decided that what I really wanted to do to celebrate was to visit the Redwoods. I had seen them when I was a baby, which really doesn’t count. It’s been on my “top places to visit” list for so long and I wanted to finally make it happen. Jeff and I hadn’t done much traveling by vehicle for long distances together because our vehicles were never reliable enough. It was safer to drive them closer to home and we wouldn’t have taken them on a road trip. I realized that we had a reliable vehicle for the first time since we’d been together and that we could indeed drive to the Redwoods. Of course there are other reasons why it’s challenging to get away: long car rides with a toddler are not easy, the chickens need care, the gardens need to be watered, the business needs energy and attention…. you know, all those things. But we talked about it and decided we could get away for one night. A vacation! Woo hoo! 

I thought some time away- even if it was just a little time away- would be good for us. We’d been stressed, money was tight, and the idea of leaving all our worries behind for a bit sounded really appealing to me.

Once we decided to go, we started planning. My birthday is on September 21st. It’s a Saturday and we knew we would want to be at market that day. So we decided on leaving for our trip a little early instead, on Monday, September 16th. For my birthday gift, my mom paid for us to stay in a hotel for a night and then gave us some money beyond that for gas money. (Bless her.) 

On Sunday we got all the harvesting done in the garden. Jeff worked on making food to fill up our coolers for the trip. I got us packed up (easy- didn’t need much.) We put plenty of food and water in the coop for the chickens (they stayed in the coop while we were gone.) The rain watered the garden for us. We got orders packaged up. Monday morning we stopped by the post office, the bank, and ended up deciding at the last minute that we really needed an oil change. So we got out a little later than we expected. We drove from our home in Mapleton to Florence, on the coast. We drove down the coast, along highway 101. Online it said that it was only a three and a half hour drive from Florence to Crescent City (our destination that night.) I thought: we’re only three and a half hours from the Redwoods, I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to go there!

Coos Bay was the farthest south that I had ever driven on 101. I knitted until we got to Coos Bay and then declared that I would not knit for the rest of the trip because I didn’t want to miss any views out the window. As we were about to leave Coos Bay, I told Jeff that I felt like Samwise Gamgee from Lord of The Rings…. you know the part where he says “one more step and it’s the farthest from the Shire I’ve ever been.” So I joked that one more step and it would be the farthest south on 101 I’d ever been.

We went over lots of bridges (including the tallest bridge in Oregon, over Thomas Creek.) Every time we saw water Bracken would look for boats and he would get very excited if he saw one!

We made lots of stops. I don’t know if that three and a half hour estimate would have been correct even if we hadn’t pulled over as many times as we did.

We pulled over at Bullards Beach State Park right before Bandon to use the restroom and have a break from the car. We saw a bunch of guys cleaning fish. They caught some huge salmon!

We watched them filet it. We asked some questions, but they didn’t say much. One guy had a hat on that said “Shut Up and Fish”, so I took my cue from him. They did let us take pictures.

When we left our house it was dark and rainy, but as we headed farther south the skies cleared. It was sunny and beautiful out.

 Jeff had a great suggestion of a “watermelon break” before we got back in the car. Our farming friends had brought us a 25 pound watermelon to market. It was nearly as big as Bracken. 

Jeff packed it for our trip and it was delicious.

There were some beautiful cedar trees by where we parked. Every time we needed to get back in the car, Bracken didn’t want to. He wanted to keep exploring each place we stopped. I don’t blame him.

 Our next stop was in Port Orford at the Battle Rock City Park.

A nice guy took some pictures of the three of us.

 (This is the point where my photos get a bit pixelated. Sorry about that. I finally needed to re-size them all to post on the blog because it was taking so long to load them.)

 We popped in the visitor’s center.

 Then headed down to the beach. Jeff had something fun in mind.

 It was a beautiful beach and the weather was gorgeous.

 Bracken told me he wanted to put his feet in the water. It was the first time he ever instigated that. He ditched his shoes, rolled up his pants, and was ready to go.

 The ocean was cold and refreshing.

 And then Jeff’s fun idea: to fly a kite. Bracken had seen other people fly kites at the beach before, but had never flown one himself. You can imagine how excited he was.

 And when he did it all by himself? He was ecstatic.

 Sandy toes on the beach? Love.

 We were really glad we stopped there. The beautiful setting, with the weather, and Bracken’s excitement over flying the kite made it one of my favorite parts of our trip.

 Then we were back on the road.

 I had really hoped that Bracken would nap, so the car ride wouldn’t be so long for him. (And so we could make fewer stops and get there quicker. But the stops were really fun.) He didn’t end up falling asleep in the car until about the time we got to the California border. At that point we were about 19 miles from our destination in Crescent City. I wished the nap would have happened sooner, but I was glad he was getting any rest at all.

We stayed at the Curly Redwood Lodge.

 I liked the nasturtium flowers they had planted in all the planter boxes.

 We got unpacked. Bracken woke up as soon as we stopped.

We weren’t planning on going out to eat at all. We had food packed for our whole trip. But then we got a craving for seafood and decided to go to the seafood restaurant right across the street.

 We ordered our meal to go. (I got salmon, Jeff got oysters.)

 Then we brought our meal to the beach. We sat eating and watching.

 It was a beautiful evening.

 Bracken ran all around in between bites.

 Jeff brought a kite out, but there was no wind to fly it. We tried anyway, but it didn’t work. It was so warm on that beach, even in the evening. In the beach near where we live, it would have been chilly that time of day.

When we finished our meal and were ready to leave the beach, we swung by the grocery store to buy some frozen blueberries- our favorite treat. We watched a show in our hotel room, laughing and eating frozen blueberries. Jeff got worried when we got some blueberry stains on the white sheets. He thought they would make us pay for the sheets. I wasn’t worried because I’ve washed lots of blueberry stains out of our clothes and they’ve always come out. It shows what homebodies we are: we already missed our home and sleeping in our own bed on the first night. But we were so glad we went and we woke up the next morning ready to see the Redwoods. 

Next post: Day Two.