5th Year Aniversary

Tim and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary by going camping at Humboldt Redwoods State Park this labor day weekend. It took us six hours to get there, but it was worth every minute. The campground was beautiful. Our camp was very private and sat on the edge of the forest. Campfires are usually not allowed at campsites in California, but ours had a fire pit which we took advantage of the first night we got there.

On our first day, we needed to get a few supplies, so we went to the quaint local town. There was an "antique" store that Tim thought Grandma Rachel would love. We bought an iron skillet, and an apple sauce sieve with pestle. We are going to make apple sauce this coming weekend. We then headed over to the visitors center to get a map of the park and its trails. The visitors center was very impressive, and we found the life of Charles Kellogg fascinating. We went back to our camp, and we decided to hike from the trail behind our camp to the South Fork Eel River. It didn't take very long, but it was a beautiful trail. Every twist and bend was so exciting. There were also very few people on the trail. It was nice to escape from our city manners, back to our small town manners again. There were a lot of burnt redwood stumps which created the most unusual forts for creatures. We got down to the river and Tim took a little dip. We ate our lunch and headed back. I took a nap for the afternoon while Tim spent a frustrating time trying to get an impressive fire going. We ate dinner, talked for a while, and went to bed. We were exhausted.

The next day we decided to take a longer hike. We drove to Albee Creek Campground, and decided to hike around there. After a false start up a gravel road, we decided to take the Bull Creek trail North which was 5 miles long one way. It was a beautiful trail which took us through redwoods and along Bull creek. The air was so fresh and smelled beautiful. We enjoyed crossing the different bridges, and again there were very few people on the trail. We talked about our baby again and spent some time trying to come up with a nickname for it while it's in me. Tim came up with "Quark", and I'm calling it "little bun"-not to be associated with "bun in the oven". It's a nickname of a little boy in my favorite Chinese movie. After along time, we got to our destination and thought that maybe we had been over ambitious. We were both very tired, but we had a quick lunch and headed back along south bull trail. A lot of the redwood trees in this area had foreign bulbous sacs which we had fun turning into old men and creatures. This picture of Tim is an example of an wise old man we ran into. We finally got back to our car. We were so beat. We lit a fire and got our dinner going. I was our last night there and I was sad that I didn't have enough energy to stay up later.

The next day we decided to take Highway 1 back to Oakland. Hwy. 1 is the most beautiful Hwy in the U.S. It follows the coast line, and goes through tiny tiny towns. On our way back we stopped at some tourist traps. We stopped at a supposed area where Big Foot has been sighted, and spend time in the gift shop. We decided to buy a carved wooden face as a present for our anniversary. It's hanging in our bedroom, and it makes me smile every time I see it. We also drove through a Drive-thru tree. I didn't realize those really existed.
Here is a picture that some kind ladies took for us.

We stopped at a town along the way and decided to have lunch with the hopes of eating fish and chips. The town was having their labor day parade, so we stopped and tried to look like locals. We did find a place with overpriced fish and chips, and then headed out again. We drove down to Goat rock which is where Dorrie and Dave took us the first week we came to California. It brought back nice memories of being with them. We walked to the end of the beach where Russian river and the pacific ocean meet. There were a lot of really cute seals on the beach. We then drove through Bohemia and headed home. Our total time from leaving the camp to getting home was almost twelve hours. All in all, we had a great weekend. It felt so good to go camping and spend some time together in nature. I think "little bun" enjoyed its time too because it didn't give me nausea!