The Redwood forrest and some cute little rascals.

After a night stay at the lovely Honey Bear campground on the Oregon Coast we continued heading down the beautiful coast line. We had been contemplating whether to take the coastal route or the interstate and decided it would be a lot more interesting driving by the ocean!

Unfortunately it was really rainy and grey and we had our fill of the same view after about 3 hours. The ocean was really pretty, but getting stuck behind slow moving trailors and driving around crazy cliffs just wasn't really all that great! I think it would have been a TON better if it were sunny and we would have been able to get out at the beach and soak up the sun!

We wanted to head back the interstate since (apparently) it could have shave about 6 hours off our trip... but we had already gone so far out of the way to get to the coast so we thought we better commit.

Two big highlights of taking Highway No. 5 [coastal route]-

-We went through Dune City which wouldn't you know it was named for their massive sand dune national parks! We got to play in the sand dunes and read awesome bumper stickers like : JUST DUNE IT! and IT'S A DUNE THING. Apparently the people that live in Dune City are serious about their sport. It was still overcast and a bit rainy so the dunes were a bit messy- but still a lot of fun! I can only imagine how much fun it would be DUNE it dune buggy style. We were just running and jumping around and it was STILL a good time.

by dfinnecy on flickr

-On our way into California we got to drive through Redwood National Park. It was awesome! It actually reminded me a lot of Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. It was so quiet when we drove through the park, when we parked our car on the side of the road everything was still- not a sound. It was almost creepy.



That's a really big tree!

Near the end of the highway through the redwoods there was a touristy museum with this creepy Paul Bunyan statue. The creepy part was how he would talk to you as you got out of your car... like actually talk to you- have a conversation. He even winked at me. Hmmm...

Mike and I were planning on camping at the Clear Lake State Park in California and we arrived just as the sun was going down. We ate our dinner by candlelight and set up our tent in the dark! It is incredibly easy to set up our little tent EVEN in the dark! We lurve our tent.

When we woke up in the morning we went for a walk. The campground was incredible! There were three different areas to the campground and we were at the top of a huge hill overlooking the lake. There was a ton of wildlife! I saw turtles on one of the boardwalks! So crazy...

There were also crazy amounts of THESE:
Lizards are so awesome... I wonder if people in California consider them pests? They really are everywhere! When we got back to our campsite we found some new enemies...
These two little guys had gotten into one of the bags sitting on the picnic table and stole a little container that we filled with olive oil and were gnawing through the lid to try to get to the oil! I didn't know that squirrels liked olive oil? Hmm... we put a couple of raspberries closer to us to get photo's of them. Haha... if you look closer at the photo above the squirrel with the berry is NOT happy sharing with his buddy.

Then we gave them a few more and they seem to be a lot happier.


cute little rascals.