VACATION!!!

Day one of our vacation was mostly driving (well, who am I kidding, most of the days we did a lot of driving).  We headed up 101 to our first stop, which was the Drive Thru Tree in Leggett, CA.  These Redwood trees are AMAZING.  I recommend everyone goes to the Redwood forest at least once in their lifetime to be humbled by these trees.

We had a nice picnic in the meadow, and then since we didn't think the van would fit through the tree (we saw a few people try and end up scraping the side mirrors....pass on that, thank you very much!) we walked through and took a picture.

 We weren't quite ready to get back on the road, so we took a nice walk around the pond in the meadow.  We saw many, many frogs/toads, Dragonflies, Damselflies, ducks, and other various birds.

Isabella found some really nice feathers, we're not positive but we think they came from an owl or a hawk.

Once we left the Drive Thru Tree, the plan was to stop in Weott, CA and check out the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  All three of the munchkins fell asleep, so instead of waking them we decided to drive on through to Eureka for dinner.  It ended up being so early, that we kept driving after dinner so we wouldn't have to get up in the morning and drive to Crescent City.  We stopped at Clam Beach on our way, but Gabriel was cold and had to use the bathroom, so it was a short stop.  We were about halfway to Eureka when we saw a huge herd of Elk.  These guys were behind a fence, but even still some were only about 30 feet away from us.

 We made it to Crescent City around 8, then relaxed with tv the rest of the evening.  (The kids were VERY excited to see tv shows again)