What a great time we had in the Redwoods.......

We had a super fun weekend with the Petersons in the Redwoods National Forest!! We hiked all over the place...through marshes, sand, mud, cold creek water, over river rocks, through and up onto gigantic trees, down a steep hillside and then back up again (ugh!) and through it all, we saw some pretty amazing things! Except for one incident where Rachel jumped off the dune and landed wrong on her tailbone which caused her little body to experience some shock and a "better safe than sorry" visit to the ER in Arcata, CA., we all had a fun time! Rachel said "I think I'll just run down the dunes from now on Mom." The kids threw rocks, made brooms from sticks and leaves, played football, longboarded, crawled up mountains, climbed up giant tree trunks and ran up other tree trunks, used a lot of bandaids, sang a great new song (thanks Laird - they sang it all the way home), and blew straw wrappers at Taco Bell....the parents just tried to keep up and had a great time! Katie...you need to come next time! We missed you!

Where are all the elk?

There they are.....


The AMAZING drive through tree.....

Jumping for joy in the parking lot...

Landon had a little thing for Anna that became more and more obvious over the weekend...

What a great BIG brother Tyler is.....

I call this "Portrait of a bird dropping with 2 corns, a bean and a bottlecap." Larry said it was a bird that had just eaten some great Mexican cuisine.....


Playing around with macro.....

Isn't he cute?

The state of the outhouses was......well.....a little on the smelly side

Hiking through FERN CANYON....so gorgeous and lush I had to remind myself we weren't in the Pacific Northwest.....

Drinking out of the fern waterfall......

I'm a little dirty here.....

Dune jumping......

You still have much to learn Anakin......

My two "bears" in the bear box.....thank goodness for the bear box because Laura and Anna actually heard a bear walk near our campsites

More BARS in more places??? I think not!

Petersons in the tree.....

Despains in the tree.....

Who can climb highest? Larry can with Jay as a close second....

Rachel, Lach, Anna and Landon....

Jay and Tyler try to run up the tree stump....Jay succeeded in reaching the top and Tyler almost did. He wasn't too happy to be shown up by his dad!

The sheer size of the Redwood trees is staggering!

Inside a HOLLOW tree that a family actually lived in during the Depression....

My MONKEY girls.....