Road Trip 2012, Day 11: Beach #4, Ruby Beach and the Quinault Rainforest

We left Aberdeen, Washington, and continued toward the Washington coast. There is a great little visitor center near Beach #1. I asked the young man (I sound so old when I say that, but “cute kid” sounded bad, too) where we could find the best tide pools and he suggested Beach #4. Off we went.

Grace had been totally nutsy antsy to get down to the water to look for critters and so far we hadn’t found a good spot. Beach #4 fulfilled all her creature finding needs.

And Caroline found a new friend. Meet Sam.

Right away Grace found some sea stars. No, she didn’t rip them off the rocks; she gently removed them. No creatures were harmed during this vacation (except those we squushed by accident when walking through the rocks, and there weren’t too many!).

Brad also had a lot of fun playing on the beach. He and the girls played one of his favorite games, jump rope. He really wanted to do double dutch but the girls aren’t as good as he is (VA state champion, 3 years running).

Between  Beach #4 and Ruby Beach was one of the 6 largest trees in the world, a humongous sitka spruce. Had to get a picture of that!

Next we drove north to Ruby Beach, one of the highly recommended beaches to visit There is a large creek or small river that flows onto the beach where it slows down and forms sort of a pond. There are billions of perfect skipping stones right there and I think there are very few people who can walk past that calm pool of water and not skip a few. Look at the concentraion on his face.

Caroline wanted me to take a picture of her jumping off a log. I love the tongue out and leg position. Not sure what she was going for, but funny she was.

And this was Grace, enjoying the peace of the beach.

After the beauty and open expanses of the Washington coast we turned inland toward the Quinault Rainforest and Lake Quinault.

We hiked up to some falls that were near the lodge and visitor’s center. It was more of a hike than we had expected and the rain was kind of unpleasant. Grace’s “raincoat” was far from waterproof and she was a soaking mess when we got back to the car. But it was pretty.

No surprise that at this time we decided to generally stay in the car unless there was no other option. There was a nice route around the lake that we opted to take.

Until we got to the world’s largest spruce tree. That required a short hike. No other option.

It was scenically foggy and luckily I could take most of my photos from the comfort of the car, including this waterfall below where a black lab was happily frolicking.

During our drive around the lake the girls were, for some reason, singing Christmas songs. Don’t ask us why. The weird thing was that while in the midst of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” we passed this tree. Totally bizarre.

We didn’t pass any other Christmas trees on the trip around the lake, just an elk and another car or two. Weird.

The Martin family of Katy, TX and Joyce, WA were kindly putting up with us for a few days so we drove to their adorable house and hung out with them until bedtime. We were looking forward to an early, fun-filled day.

Road Trip 2012, Day 10: Mt. St. Helens

So, this is what our tent and site looked like after our nighttime installation. Not bad! We had our blow up mattresses, mattress pad and oodles of blankets.

Miraculously, Grace seems to be up and going strong!

The trees were really, really huge. That blueish speck is me.

There was a nice little stream just over the fallen tree behind our tent. Brad washed his hair in it (OUCH). Grace was sporting her new socks from Brandon & Ayuri.

Since we were now in Washington it was time to mark the window with the abbreviation for the new state.

DUH! We’re at Mt. St. Helens!

…which has these funky lava tubes. We took a drive around the southern side of Mt St. Helens, since that’s where we were camping. Some of the roads were still closed due to snow, but most were open and there were some cool interpretive trails. The photos below show the girls & me crawling through a lava tube. When the hot lava pours down the mountain it will sometimes topple these huge trees then harden around them. The wood will either burn up or decay naturally, leaving only the lava tube behind. Because the trees were so darned big they left plenty of space for us to crawl through. Some trees remained standing and left behind well-shaped lava areas.

Our dear Gary Martin saw this photo and commented, “My Precioussssss.” That cracked me up and I can’t look at the picture without hearing that quote.

The wildflowers were simply gorgeous. It was basically still spring up there. There’s not much of a summer.

There was a beautiful stream and waterfall area that we trecked through. The lahar caused by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens cleared land that had not previously been cleared, showing signs of another volcanic eruption that had occurred 25,000 years ago.

After that we got on the road heading up to the Olympic Peninsula which took us around towards the north side of Mt. St. Helens and the better side to see the massive crater caused by the eruption. Of course, it was too cloudy to see the top. Figured. The visitor center there was very thorough and interesting and closes at 6pm on the dot – don’t try to do anything that might put you over, they won’t let you.

There was an interpretive trail around a small body of water. We saw a garter snake, a rabbit and a huge bass.

We had planned to camp out somewhere around Mount Rainier, but we decided that the crummy weather would probably make a trip to the mountain less than desirable. Camping out would be even less desirable than that! Thanks to my trusty hotels.com app I found us a place in Aberdeen, Washington. We even had an indoor pool and the girls got to enjoy it for a little while after our dinner at Billy’s. Brad had a yakburger, but he thought it was a smidge dry. The service was great and that’s a good restaurant if you’re in the Aberdeen area.

Road Trip, 2012, Day 9: From California to Mt. St. Helens

These trees are huge, like really, really huge. It’s very difficult to comprehend that they are living (or were living!) things.

The drive to Mt. St. Helens was uneventful. We at breakfast  in a little Mexican restaurant in Del Rio and kept trucking. Being the benevolent parents we are, we stopped at a Walmart in Eureka to buy the girls “Breaking Dawn.”

The big highlight of this drive was the Columbia River Gorge. OH MY was it beautiful! I knew it was the windsurfing capital (of the world, maybe?), but I didn’t have any idea it would like like it does.

There were waterfalls scattered throughout the cliffs and the views of the continuing gorge were spectacular.

We finally got to our camp pretty late at night, maybe around 10:30pm. We set up the tent in the dark, drizzling night with the sound of a bubbling creek somewhere nearby.

Road Trip 2012, Day 8: San Francisco and Avenue of the Giants

Oh what a beautiful bright and early morning! So far we have totally lucked out on the weather. We needed to buy more dry ice so we used Skyvie (our snazzy new Android app) to track some down. Along the way we went back to Lombard Street so we could get better photos of the curviest street on the planet (?). The photos totally do NOT do it justice, though, and there’s probably not a more entertaining way to go down it than by GoCar. We didn’t try it with the Sequoia!

There’s Alcatraz off in the bay. These streets really were nuts!

We also went to Golden Gate Park (which, by the way, isn’t actually that near the Golden Gate Bridge) and took a photo op outside the conservancy.

We walked around the park a bit and went over to the California Academy of Sciences Museum. I think this will be one of my very few regrets on this trip. We didn’t have time to really see the museum, so we just visited the gift store. It was also expensive at $100 for the family, so I’d like to get back to San Francisco to spend a full day and truly get to enjoy it.

Sadly, we got back in the truck and started to head out of the city. We went to Presidio Park, which is actually where the Golden Gate Bridge is, and wandered around for a few minutes. The photo opportunities were awesome, and the gift store was nice (I like park and museum gift stores more than any other stores out there!).

So now it was bye-bye San Francisco and on to the Avenue of the Giants, which is a 35 mile trek through some of the country’s tallest trees.

We did stop at a small winery, Saracina, but me being the huge wine-snob that I am, I was bummed they didn’t have any moscato (lol! love the stuff). Despite my depression, we purchased some olive oil made from their 130 year old trees, seen below.

The redwoods were totally and absolutely unbelievable. There is nothing I can write that will do them justice, but to say that you absolutely need to see them for yourselves. The campground, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Burlington area, was quiet, peaceful and packed (but you wouldn’t know that!). I wish we had planned for a couple of days there instead of one night.

In short, every American citizen needs to visit the California redwoods – but be sure to plan a couple days.