Once, Twice, Three Times Vacation Part Two

I figured I better get to work on this post, since I am about to leave on a lady trip to Tahoe sans J and Tay (!) tomorrow, and I haven’t even finished posting about this here vacation. So here goes…

Our triple vacation kept on keepin’ on as we left the magnificent Kate Wolf Music Festival and we headed north on Highway 101. Our destination was to get to my mom’s house in Mount Shasta by Monday early afternoon, which gave us a little over a day to make the five or six hour drive.

We had no real plans other than driving up through The Avenue of the Giants just off of Highway 101. We drove up and hopped off the freeway to start what can only be described as a (and I’m sure I’m going to use this word in this post waaaay to much) magical magical adventure.

As soon as we drove into the trees I knew we’d made the right choice to take the extra day to do this. I have been to the big trees in Calaveras, but the combo of damp, mist, green and giant trees is just beyond compare. Magical.

Our first stop was the Drive Through Tree that our truck barely squeezed through!
We didn’t get a picture of the truck going though because we all wanted to be in the car while it drove through, but we did take these fun photos walking through the tree.

Next up was an amazing redwood tree playhouse that Josephine wanted to stay in aaaaaallllll day. We had to drag her away from her house. It was pretty neat. How fun would it be to have one of these in your backyard??

We meandered through the redwoods, laughing and amazing and basking in the magic magicalness of the magical redwood forest.

And then we frolicked. We pretended to dance with fairies. Hugged giant trees. Felt the moss. Tromped around. It was (here it is again…), magical.

Next we headed up to Eureka to eat. We magically (!) stumbled across the most amazing family style restaurant called The Samoa Cookhouse. It was perfect luck, as there was no menu, they served home made delicious food (menu for lunch: minestrone soup, fresh baked bread, salad, bean salad, corn, roasted red potatoes, baked beans, RIBS!, and apple pie), and served you all you could eat. Yum yum yum!
Right outside was a Maritime Museum, which was closed, but a good playground.

All in all a great pit stop!

We drove on (while the little miss napped contently) through the mountains east towards Redding. We still weren’t sure where we would stop. We made it to Redding, and despite being just an hour from my moms, we stopped for the night. Partly because upon entering Redding we had a not so pretty family style meltdown, which was only resolved by a stop at the most ghetto family fun center arcade thing I have ever seen. Josephine cried and whined, Taylor raged around a bit, and I may or may not have yelled, shed a tear or two and huffed around while Taylor “won” Josephine a stuffed tiger from the claw machine. I say “won” because the teenager who worked there just gave it to him when he asked her if he could please just buy the cheap tiger after he spent ten bucks trying unsuccessfully to claw grab it.

We all calmed down, got another hotel room, went swimming at the pool, and just chilled the eff out. It was quite nice.

The next morning, meltdown free and relaxed, we drove up the hill to Mount Shasta. And there will begin chapter three of….. The Epic Family Vacation Chronicles That Are Taking Me Forever And Ever To Write! Thanks for hanging in there, buddies.