Day 31, Sunday, May 18

• In the morning we went hiking in the Redwood Forest. I'll tell you that story along with the photos below. :)
• We drove to Beverly Beach to go camping. When I mapped it at home, I had calculated 2.5 hrs between the two locations. I think the program I use at home is desperately flawed because the timing calculations have been off by a minimum of 1 hour, and this time they were off by about 3 hours. Yes....It took about 5.5, maybe 6 hours to get to Beverly Beach from Crescent City. CRAZY!!
• We had a campfire with the kids once we got to Beverly Beach. Campfires are so fun!!

Our car looked teeny in the Redwoods. We got permission from our campground to check out late (1 pm instead of 11 am) so that we could take a scenic route on a road where trailers were not advised.
We decided to go hiking. We knew we were looking for a particular trail, and we saw a sign for it, so we pulled off to the side of the road (one of the few areas to pull off on this crazy, gravel road!!). We had no clue that a little bit further down the road, there was a parking lot for the trail we were looking for!!! :)

We walked half a mile down a beautiful trail, and then came to a problem: the bridge was out, and there was (though it's hard to see here) a creek down below.

Our options were A. Turn around, B. Walk across this huge, steep fallen down tree (like a giant balance beam, with a rock-bottomed creek 10 feet below. :) It was scarier than it looks here!!

Option C: Walk across the creek on the rocks.

We chose option C! Karry helped all of the kids across....Ok, and me!! :) The rocks were quite slippery, and it was just nice to have a hand to hold!!

We got to the other side of the trail, not really knowing where it would go. We walked a ways more, and then found a loop that we walked around, which was about a mile, we're guessing. It was amazing...BEAUTIFUL....There is NOTHING like the amazingness of standing below those huge trees. I recommend everybody go to the Redwood Forest and go hiking!!

We ran into another couple along the loop and they shot our photo! Do you see how HUGE this tree is? Wow!!! When we were on this loop, we saw a sign that said that the trail we had just taken was closed, due to the bridge being out, and people were advised to stay off of the trail. Oops! We're actually really glad we didn't see a sign like that on the other side, the trail was SO fun, and going across the creek was an adventure!!

We had to go over some fallen trees, and under some. :)

After the loop, we had to go back down the way we came in, to get to our car. The loop connected to a parking lot. If we'd exited there, we would have had to walk down a very narrow, windy, dusty gravel road for a while (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile?) to get to our car. The trail (and even "fording" the creek again) seemed safer than the road!! I thought I'd roll up my pants, take my shoes off and walk across barefooted (wade) this time. It felt like my feet were sitting inside a bowl of ice cubes!!! YIKES! That didn't work!!

The boys and I coming up the trail from the water. It was a little steep here. There were steps to get down to that bridge that was missing, but this was an alternate path. :) Karry said this was the path for wheelchairs (instead of using the steps). Funny guy. :)

It was a Sunday and once again we were missing church, but we were all in awe of God in these woods. The kids were asking how God made the trees, and the ground we were walking on. We talked about Isaac making his pictures, and asked what he has to start with, and he said "paper, and crayons," and Kaleb said for a painting you need paint and paper, and Noah said to make a Lego car, he needs wheels and Legos. We explained to the kids that God started with NOTHING to make all of this wonderful stuff, and isn't that amazing!?!? We can never make what God made, and He did it with nothing.

That's all for the Redwood Forest. It was so incredibly fun going hiking there! Driving away from it was crazy--to see how huge the forest is, and how big it all looks, and to know that we were walking through a tiny little chunk of it and there is so much more to explore! I wanted to go back and spend a month just THERE exploring those woods!! This picture was of one of our views as we drove. I think this was in Oregon.

Sitting around the campfire. We were in Oregon, so it was cold. :) The campfire didn't last long, everyone wanted to go in and get warm!!