Walking among the giants

We left Newport on Friday and made our way down the coast-since we are landlocked here in New Mexico, it is so easy to forget how immense the ocean is. Miles after miles of beautiful beaches, rocks jutting out of the sea here and there, and endless waves lapping at the shores. And the houses...yikes! And then there are the 'Now entering Tsunami evacuation area' signs...lovely.....the picture below is of another lighthouse along the highway-so pretty!

We drove through a portion of the Redwood forest, since it, too, is immense and far reaching, and we all oohed and aahed out the window as we drove past towering trees that stood right next to the road. We stopped and walked up a trail into the forest and had a lot of fun seeing more of the huge trees. The kids were all pretty impressed-although we did get tired of saying 'put that stick down', 'quit picking stuff up', 'STAY ON THE TRAIL'...and we looked for some of those gigantic pinecones (any of you see that John and Kate plus 8 episode where they took pinecones form the forest?) but didn't see any! It was so scenic that we got a little picture crazy....hang in there, only 17 more to go!!
L and L were having fun holding hands with J.....sweet!This one is a little blurry...Eric took it, but it is one I love...we actually look like we're having a good time rather than trying to keep 5 monkeys on the path instead of in the trees!!One of the trees we came across (actually there were quite a few like this one) had the inside hollowed out...perfect space for E....L and J
He's standing on a little bit of a hill....he's really not that much taller than her!!

G and L
E and LHere we are..including our ever faithful companions-the suburban and trailer-we never leave home without them!!

We ended our day by staying in a less than stellar hotel in the even less than stellar town of Eureka (hopefully I haven't offended anyone with that statement :-) but trust me, it wasn't pretty!! Let's just say all families have to experience at least one Griswold family vacation moment and this was ours!

We are off to the lake for the weekend, so I'll post more in a few days. Maybe Bill will get up on skis, who knows! Parker is going along too, so we'll see how he handles it all...Parker is the 6th child around here...the dog....

Have a great weekend :-