It may not seem like it, but this is basically our last day of the trip, as tomorrow we start a four day trip home. With that in mind, we headed out to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park to walk through the redwood forest - specifically, the same forest that the Endor scenes from Return of the Jedi were filmed in. The actual filming location was in an area not near here and scheduled for cutting, so it no longer exists, but it was in the same forest and it really looks identical when you are walking in it.
Everyone greatly enjoyed the walk through the forest, especially Evan, who called it the second best part of the trip. I was having a ton of fun until the kids realized they could run up and down the fallen tree limbs. At one point, a tour guide was showing his group the bottom trunks of a fallen tree that my kids were climbing on. There was a huge THUMP as Evan jumped off the tree and landed and he paused his talk to comment that he didn't know what that noise was.
Sandra and I had been in this forest before when Alex and Evan were little, but we had only done this walk, as we were travelling that day and hadn't even planned to stop in the forest. This time we stopped in at the information center and found out there was another walk deeper in the park (down a scary grid road) called the Grove of Titans where a few of the biggest redwood trees in California exist. We drove down the road, found a spot to park along the side of the scary and narrow grid road and then walked into the forest.
This walk was a bit scarier, as the first part was along a narrow path without a railing and there was a small cliff on one side. Once you got to the grove area, the path changed to metal walkways above the forest floor, which felt a little bit safer. Anyway, I don't think I can truly describe how big the trees were. It's impossible to take a picture of one, and we were all impressed.
Walking back to the car, we took the scary road all the way to the other end of the park and back into town and then ended up having lunch on the beach. Crescent Beach is very nice, with decent sized waves and it is right on the highway, so easy to get to. After lunch, Bradley played in the water for awhile, before we headed to our next stop, which was a small local aquarium.
Given that this was our third aquarium this trip, there wasn't much new to see at this one. However, it did have something new to do, which was at the end where they had a pool with two sharks in it, and you were allowed to pet the sharks. They were leopard sharks, which are bottom feeders and have small mouths with small teeth under their bodies, so the risk to your limbs is tiny. Everyone seemed to enjoy the chance to touch the sharks, and Bradley stayed after everyone else had left. By that point, the larger shark was done with people touching it, and as he stuck his hand near it, it quickly reversed direction and sped away, splashing water everywhere. It then refused to swim anywhere near Bradley, which I guess ended his time playing with the sharks.
Our final brief stop was the local lighthouse, which is only accessible by foot at low tide. We got there two hours after low tide and were still able to get across to take some pictures, but had to get our feet wet leaving. After some time sitting on the rocky beach and watching the waves hit the bigger rocks, we headed back to our house for supper, thus ending our brief time in the very northern edge of California.
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