Up the coast, over the mountains, and to the Redwoods we went

This past weekend, Pedro and I took a little trip up the Pacific coast from San Francisco to the Humboldt Redwood Forest. This has been my favorite trip so far this summer. We drove up Highway 1 which is a coastal highway with the most beautiful view. We were lucky to drive up on a nice clear day so we could see to the end of the world. I loved making several stops to get out and look over the ocean and listen to the waves. The ocean is so relaxing. We also stopped for some fresh picked blueberries, which were delicious!

After driving all afternoon and evening, we stopped at the Emerald Dolphin Inn in Fort Braggs. This was a cute little inn just down the street from the ocean. Our room had a Jacuzzi tub in it, which I really enjoyed after a cold evening watching the sun set over the ocean.

The next day we finished our drive up the coast and started heading inland toward the Redwoods. We discovered a natural arch at one of our stops to look out at the ocean. It was beautiful! This day was foggy and gave a mysterious feeling to the world. I liked it, but Pedro loved it!

After driving on a fun winding road through the mountains, we came out into the valley and found a sign say "drive thru tree" so of course we had to go! It was the Chandelier Tree. We had fun eating some ice cream bars and watching to see if any of the larger cars would get stuck, ha ha. There was also a pond near by that was full of frogs. I have never seen so many frogs in  my life. You could look out over the water and just see hundreds of bumps sticking up. All I could think is that my niece McKinley would have loved it!

That afternoon we finally made it to the Humboldt Redwoods. This forest was much like the Muir woods in San Francisco, but with much larger trees. The Humboldt Redwoods is home to the Rockefeller Forest which is the world's largest contiguous old-growth forest of coast Redwoods. It also contains 100 of the 137  trees in the world that are over 350 ft tall. That is just amazing! It is hard to grasp just how tall these trees are. We took our tour through the Avenue of the Giants. If ever you are in Northern California, you must go drive the Avenue of the Giants.

This was the best photo I could get to show how beautiful it was to just look out and see so many beautiful trees. This
Still does not do this forest justice. 

Probably my favorite photo. I just thought it was cute that he had to hold on to his hat to look up this massive tree!

Looking up at the lower limb of the Founder's tree made you think you were seeing the whole
height of the tree, but the tree still went on for another 156 feet! Holy cow that is high!

I really wanted to just picnic inside this tree. 

This trip was so much fun and I know that if we ever find ourselves back in California for a long period of time, we will definitely go back up the coast, over the mountains, and into the Redwood forest.