The Ben 2015 Vacation - Church, Trees & Ocean

Setting up camp in the redwoods

I’m camping in the middle of redwood trees!!!  They are smaller than the trees found in the National and State parks, but they are redwood trees.  This is awesome!  In the days leading up to our leaving, Ben and Isaac asked me if any of our KOA camps would be “in the woods.”  Our very first KOA experience was the campground near Mount Lassen National Park seven years ago (the only national park we are not visiting this time around—Yellowstone is the substitute for Lassen J).  What continues to stick out in the minds of the boys about our stay there is the fact that the campground was in a forest-type area.  We stayed in a kabin during that visit—not a tent—but they liked the fact that we were surrounded by pine trees (our stay in the Jackson Hole KOA had that type of feel to it, but I think our not so good night sleep negated any good feelings we may have had).  I had looked at our various campgrounds via Google Earth a couple of times and had noticed trees that seemed to be a part of the property, but I couldn’t be certain.  Consequently, my answer to their question had been, “I don’t know.”  Well, now I do know and I am very excited about this—in case you couldn’t tell. J

Before arriving here, we first broke camp in Eureka and traveled a few miles to McKinleyville to attend church with the Arcata Ward.  From comments made throughout the morning, several families from the ward were on vacation, but the ward also had quite a few families who were on vacation that were visiting.  Ben asked me to stay in Elder’s quorum with him and we learned that there were more people in the quorum meeting who were visiting than regular members; happy to help swell their ranks for the day. J  One thing I found interesting about the chapel was the stadium seating—for lack of a better term.  I’ll attempt to describe this: as we walked from the foyer into the chapel, we were still on what I would call the ground floor.  As we turned to survey the chapel, however, we immediately saw that the floor gradually sloped downward until it reached the final row and the podium area.  Because Ben does better when he can stretch out, we walked down to the first row on the left hand side, so I have no idea if the podium can be seen from the overflow area, but the configuration was pretty unique (at least, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it).

After sacrament meeting, Ben, Jennifer and I attended the Gospel Principles class which, we found, was being taught by the two sister missionaries serving in the ward.  They did a good job with the lesson (how could they not; it was on missionary work J) and all three of us participated.  Elder’s quorum was taught by the president.  The lesson focused on attending the temple.  During the section focusing on teaching our children about the importance of the temple, I enjoyed listening to the examples of the brethren attending of ways they have tried to instill in their children a love for the temple and offered a few of my own.  Seeing that I recently completed the Temple Preparation lessons with Ben, I felt good about my efforts with Jennifer in teaching Ben and Isaac about the importance of the temple.  Still, as we left the building to continue our trip, I felt impressed to ask Ben and Isaac about this question and was happy to hear that they were satisfied with our efforts.

From church we drove along the Redwoods Highway (the 101) toward Crescent City.  Since it would take only about an hour and a half to reach our destination, I felt we had time to make some stops along the way, but without being certain of where to go or what to do, I decided to play things by ear.  It wasn’t long before we began to see redwood trees.  As I said in my post about our stop at Sequoia National Park I like the sequoia trees, but the redwood tree really capture my attention for some reason.  It’s funny, the trees are part of the same family and they both grow to such amazing heights, but the redwoods strike me as much more majestic than the sequoias.  Their bark is such a deep red that the trees look black and their leaves have a way of reflecting the sunlight that makes their branches seem to be the resting places for angels.  I also think that the volume of redwoods has something to do with my love of these trees.  The redwoods are everywhere while the sequoias are only in certain places.  Because of the high volume, I feel constantly surrounded by these towering, regal trees (have I waxed poetic enough for you yet J).

View from inside the trunk

Redwoods frog

When we came upon the exit for the north entrance of the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, we decided to turn off and drive along the road for a while.  Soon, we started seeing turnouts and I asked everyone if they were interested in taking a walk—they were so I pulled into one not long afterward.  There were path openings on both sides of the road.  We chose the path entrance on the east side and began our exploration.  This path started taking us up a hillside almost immediately.  Ben managed the trail okay at the beginning, but when it continued to rise, we stopped and hiked back to the car.  We did take some fun pictures along the path.  Isaac was able to squeeze into a burned out trunk and take a video of what he could see through the hole in the top.  A little later on, we found a frog as well.  The path on the west side of the road was much more level with only gradual ascents and descents.  We walked this path for about 30 minutes or so before returning again to the car.  Satisfied with our little adventure, we drove back to the 101 and continued on our way.

Talkin' smack to the sea

About 15 minutes later, the highway curved toward the coastline and revealed a parking area for the beach.  Reminded of a time seven years ago of time spent on a beach not far from Crescent City, we made our next stop of this leg of our trip.  Jennifer rolled up her pants and switched to sandals in order to walk in the water.  The sand was black—granulated lava rock I’m thinking—with large obsidian boulders scattered here and there and encrusted with barnacles and what looked like clam shells.  We found a couple of starfish attached to the bottom of one of these rocks.  Ben and Isaac played a game where they would run forward onto the wet sand and then run from the next wave rolling up the beach.  At one point they hopped on smaller rocks next to a larger one to escape from getting their shoes wet and Isaac actually started trash-talking the sea (that’s one I’ve never seen before J).  After walking for about half a mile, we came across a boulder strewn area perfect for tide pools.  We found a bunch of sea anemones.  Two very large rocks thrusting from the water about a mile from shore were teeming with birds.  From the pieces of crab we found on the rocks, they were probably the perpetrators of the remnants of the crab feast.  At one point, however, I caught a movement in the water and found a live crab scuttling as close to the sides of the boulders as he could.  When I turned to look at him, he froze and then tried to slowly inch away from me while I pulled out the video camera to take a picture of him.  Other than that, the amount of tide pool life was scarce, but it was fun looking.

Dinner!

Feeling hunger coming on and ready to drive to the KOA, we returned to the car to continue our journey which brings me full circle back to where I began—with our tent set up in the center of a group of redwood trees!  I must mention the importance of advance planning.  When I walked into the office and told the lady at the register that I had a reservation, she replied, “Good, we like to hear people have reservations when our camp is full.”  He comment leads me to believe that she had turned away quite a few people throughout the day.  After setting up our tent, we had our own brand of camp food for dinner.  I did much better with the fire … okay, I broke down and cheated with a resin fire starter block purchased from the office (I don’t like making purchases on Sunday, but I had no patience to wait another 45 minutes to get the fire started and it was $1.25).  Jennifer had an idea to make chili nachos.  She actually bought the chips, nacho cheese and chili (and a manual can opener) before we left.  I heated the chili in the pot I had been able to shoe horn into the trunk before we left.  Heating chili over a fire … not exactly earth-shattering nor will it qualify me for induction into the Mountain Man Hall of Fame, but for us, it was a major camping accomplishment. J  Dinner was a success and our hunger satisfied.  We finished the day with several rousing games of foosball before retiring to bed … in the middle of redwood trees!