Monday, July 5, 2010

Oregon Trip, Day 5

Monday morning dawned bright and early and this was the day Dennis was most excited for because we were going to see the redwoods! At the top of our list was to get to drive through a giant red wood tree!


We left rather late in the morning and ended up stopping at a beach south of Crescent City somewhere for lunch. We ate and played for a little while and then continued on our way. Just as we were getting to the Redwood National Forest, if that was the name, lol, there is a place called The Trees of Mystery. It's a redwood tree park place with a skyride and has a huge statue of Paul Bunyun and Babe the Blue Ox.




They have a lot of really cool trees and things to look at the Trees of Mystery. Here is a picture of all the kids in our group clustered on some giant roots. (This was named The Elephant Tree btw). So, there is (from left to right) Danielle, Charity, Spencer, Miriam, Michael, John, Gabriel, Norma and Aurora. Think we had our hands full this trip? lol.


Here's a picture of our little family near another one of the giant attractions. The kids had fun crawling through the "tunnel" to the other side of the path.




I just had to get a shot of the trees overhead. If I remember right, Dennis said a lot of these trees are over 250 feet tall... What an amazing view! Mom got one of these types of shots of the Cathedral Trees I think that is equally if not more amazing!




Here is Dennis and the girls in front of a GIANT redwood. This tree is over 19 feet in diameter and larger than the one we were hoping to get to drive through (which the brochure had said was 15 feet). We tried to see if all 19 of us could encircle the tree... we couldn't. We got a little over halfway! Although if there wasn't a fence around it and we'd been able to get right up next to it you never know, maybe we would have been barely able to reach! lol.


At the top of the hiking trail is their Sky Coaster. It was a 5-7 minute ride (didn't feel nearly that long though!) up the mountain to the very top with a magnificent view. I think this might have been the girls' favorite part of the entire day! They wouldn't have minded just riding up and down and up and down! lol.

My favorite view from the top!


After we rode down from the Sky Coaster, Mom, Dad, Danielle and I rode back down to the parking lot/gift shop/visitor center area and let everyone finish hiking down. They had a shorter trip down with a lot of wood sculptures and cool things to see but I was exhausted after the hike up. Dennis said it was really cool and I have to admit from the pictures I've seen there was a lot of cool things to see but I still don't regret riding down, lol. Poor Charity fell at some point and got upset so Dennis ended up carrying her for the last half of the trip down.
By the time we were done at the Trees of Mystery it was like 6 o'clock so we never went any further south and didn't get to drive through a redwood tree :( Another of our few regrets of things we didn't do on this trip, but the Trees of Mystery were really amazing and Dad talked a lot about how he went there when he was just a boy so it's been around for a long time!
Oh, I forgt to tell you about the Cathedral Trees. I didn't get a good picture but it's a grouping of 9 or so trees that form a semi-circle and they have a podium there and some benches set up and they said there are 3 or 4 weddings performed there a year! It was a real awe-inspiring place and I think that's really cool. Maybe Dennis and I will renew our vows there one day ;) lol!

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