Coasting our way to the end of the road trip

We spent most of Tuesday traveling from San Francisco to Santa Clarita, CA. Our hotel, upon request from the girls, was equipped with a pool. We have stayed in many cabins and other places that didn't have a pool, and they were jonesing to swim. When we got there, we realized we left two of the girls' swimsuits in the San Francisco hotel. (You might not believe this, but we actually *do* check our hotel rooms to make sure we didn't leave anything. Really. Really!) Anyway, I called the hotel, and they said they'd ship them to our house. This warranted a quick trip to Target once we hit Santa Clarita to get swimsuits. After that, we grabbed some dinner and then headed back to the hotel to swim. Our hotel was one mile from Six Flags, and the girls could see most of the rollers coasters. They were getting pretty pumped for the next day.

Wednesday we got up, had breakfast at the hotel, and then headed to Six Flags. It was a very warm day (92 degrees) and the line to get into the park was pretty long.We decided to get the Flash Passes to eliminate waiting in line. Flash Passes are a way for the amusement parks to eke even more money out of the park visitors. But, admittedly, it's a much better alternative than waiting in line for two hours for each ride.  The Flash Pass we chose not only put us at the front of each line, but it also allowed us to ride the ride immediately for a second time...which made a super fun day for all of us!

The girls getting ready to go into Six Flags. Can you find the hidden upsell attempt by Six Flags??

Ashley and Emily started out with a mellow ride

But it wasn't long before I was asking one of the guys in the park, who looked remarkably like John Candy, "Where are the big rides? The big ones?" and he pointed us to some more exciting rides

We are lucky, because not only are all of the girls tall enough to ride all of the rides now, they also really like *all* of the big roller coasters, and these are some really serious coasters!! We were certainly flying around this place!

Wanting to really fly, the girls did the Dive Devil. On this "ride", the girls got strapped together, hoisted up about 200 feet, and then dropped through the air to "fly."  It was pretty awesome.

 

And finally, it wouldn't be a Family Vacation without a ride on the Colossus (aka "Screemy Meemy" from the movie)

Not the best shot of the ride, but I wanted to get one before the sun went down.

Quite the way to finish up our almost four weeks on the road...open to close Six Flags...10am - 9pm!! As we were leaving, the girls asked if we were going back for a second day at Six Flags..'.uh...NO!! Mommy and Daddy are bushed", we thought!  Not sure how they did it but the girls were up for a little swimming after the full day at the park.

We all slept extremely well Wednesday night, and got up at around the crack of ten to head back to Arizona. We crossed our ninth state line on Thursday afternoon

How, exactly, were we feeling when we got out of the car into the 106 degree heat to take this picture after an amazing month on the road?  Let's zoom in on the pic, shall we?

Haley, sad, Ashley, sad, Wes, sad, Emily, sad, Sherri, sad...sorry AZ but we had one heck of a great trip!!

This coming Wednesday, we head to Kauai to finish off our sabbatical. It has been an amazing journey so far!

Alcatraz….you can get out but you can’t get in

Monday was primarily a travel day. We left Crescent City and made our way to San Francisco. We got to San Fran at about 5:30pm, and because the tourist rule book said so, we stopped first at the Golden Gate Bridge. Although we’ve been to San Francisco many times, visiting the Golden Gate Bridge never gets old. It’s truly an awesome piece of engineering and art.

Now, you might remember a few weeks ago that I rented “Escape From Alcatraz” and watched it with the girls in preparation for our stop in San Francisco. Shortly after we watched the movie, I got online to see if you need to buy tickets to Alcatraz in advance. I thought this was probably unnecessary, and figured you could actually go straight up to the ticket booth the day you wanted to visit. Boy was I wrong. I checked over two and a half weeks before we got to San Fran, and the entire month of July had already been sold out!  So, here is our “visit” to Alcatraz:

This is Alcatraz. If you look very, very closely you cannot see us on a tour. If you squint even more, you cannot see us enjoying all of the history and marine life on the island.

After our non-visit to Alcatraz, we headed into town to find our hotel. We had a place in the Fisherman's Wharf area, so we unpacked the car (shocking, no?) and then walked around. We shopped in a few stores and then went to Ghirardelli Square. 

Shhhhh.....don't tell anyone that they haven't had dinner yet...

We got our ice cream and chocolate fix and then went back to the hotel so that the kids could swim in the pool. While Ashley, Emily and Sherri were at the pool, Haley and I went to get a pizza. Yes, we had dessert before dinner. Yes, we are bad parents. I've already called CPS and self-reported this, so no need for you to pick up the phone right now. 

We ate our pizza and watched some TV and then hit the sack. It was a short stay in San Francisco.

From the Redwood Forest…

….to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

We figured if it’s in a song, it must be an awesome place to go. So, on Sunday morning, we made our way into Redwood National Forest.

We drove through the towering forest and saw the biggest and tallest trees we had ever seen. It was a beautiful drive. We stopped at several points to take pictures. We found one tree that had a sizeable hole in it, and discovered that it was hollow all the way to the top. You know this sucker is big if *I* fit in it!

A view from inside the hollow tree looking up

After about 20 minutes of driving, we found a good place to get out and hike.We hiked through the lush fern-covered forest, marveling at the size of the trees and the beauty of the area.

For you Star Wars geeks - this forest was where they filmed some of Return of the Jedi!

 

We turned around after a while and made our way back to our car. We were hungry so we scouted out a campsite to have a picnic lunch. I was pretty sure that we had food somewhere in the Excursion…I mean, given how much stuff we have with us on this trip, the odds were certainly in our favor.

On our way to find a spot, Haley had a Snack Attack. No, this isn’t what you’re thinking. You see, we have this huge three-drawer container that is sitting next to Haley in the third row of seats. This container has a bunch of road-trip snacks in it….granola bars, popcorn, muffins, etc…. Through the course of driving our thousands of miles, we found that when we make a sharp right turn at a pretty good speed, the top drawer slides out of this container towards Haley. Haley has ninja-like reflexes, so she has been able to stop the drawer before it hits her. But now, every time we hear the drawer slide out, we all yell, “Snack Attack!”  It has done this about seven times now. Haley: 7 Drawer: 0

SNACK ATTACK!

We found a campground with a picnic table and pulled out our cooler and half our pantry. As I was making the sandwiches for lunch, thousands of wasps started attacking me. Ok, so maybe it was one or two, but it was still pretty annoying. Haley was on Shoo-Duty, but after putting up a brave fight, we decided to eat lunch in the car. Suburbanites…we would’ve had a pretty tough time in the caveman days.

After our car picnic, we headed back to our hotel. We vegged out in the room for a couple hours and gave the girls a much-needed technology fix.

We then made our way back to the beach to set Ashley Jr., Ashley’s tiny lobster, free in the ocean. Ashley Jr. was happy to be back home. I waved goodbye and told Ashley Jr. that I hope we meet again. Preferably at a seafood restaurant with some drawn butter and a bib.

We ended up having dinner at the same restaurant we ate at the night before and then went back to our hotel. We booked rooms in our next two locations (I told you, we’re totally winging some of this trip) and then hit the sack at about 10pm.

“Another lake?!”

Saturday morning we slept in a bit. We stayed up late watching movies (not sure why James Cameron needed 3 hours to show a ship sinking), and Haley was sick the night before and still wasn’t feeling well. We packed up the car (aaaaagain!) and made our way towards Crater Lake. Emily said, “Another lake?! We’ve seen tons of lakes!”

Crater Lake is a volcano that collapsed 7,700 years ago. It is the deepest lake in the United States and there are no rivers that flow into or out of the lake. The water in the lake gets completely replaced over the course of 250 years. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) It is the most amazingly blue lake we have ever seen. Even Emily was blown away….she remarked, “Mommy, this is the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen.”  Yep, not just another lake, kid.

We were going to hike some of the trails around the lake, but Haley still wasn’t feeling well, so we just stopped at a couple of the overlooks and took some pictures. With all of the places we’ve been and all of the things we’ve done, it’s pretty good that we’ve only had one of the girls sick, and only for part of one day.
After Crater Lake, we made our way towards Redwood National Forest. Again, the drive through southern Oregon was gorgeous. We crossed the eighth state line of our trip:

We arrived at our hotel and unpacked the car. We headed down to the beach where the girls walked in the water and built sandcastles. Also, Ashley caught a tiny lobster and named it Ashley Jr.

After the beach, we Yelped to find a nearby restaurant for dinner. As it turns out, the highest rated restaurant was a Mexican restaurant right across the street from our hotel. It was a hole-in-the-wall place, but it was excellent, authentic Mexican food. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

CHARGE!!!

The hotel we woke up in on Friday has a “Breakfast on the Run.”  My hotel-speak decoder ring translates that to, “one step below continental breakfast.”  The girls grabbed a muffin and some fruit and Sherri made us our morning coffee. As we got ready for our exciting day, Sherri’s phone rang. It was a number in Oregon. Odd. She picked it up and her face went from furrowed-brow to full-on-excitement. The hotel had found Haley’s horse! It turns out our 45 minute stop was well worth the investment. They told us that they would ship the horse to our house. Haley was very, very happy. As beat up and old as that stuffed animal is, there is simply no replacing something as special as that horse is to her.

With a little more gas in our engines, we headed to our next stop, Sandland Adventures. We had made reservations for their thirty minute Sandrail adventure, which is basically a huge dune buggy going really fast over sand dunes. 

Three words describe this…. Oh Em Gee!! Matt, our driver, started off with, “Welcome to my office!”  It is hard to describe just how thrilling and amazing this ride was, so I’ll give you a little taste via a video I took.

The girls *loved* the ride, and Emily and Ashley kept yelling, “CHARGE!!!” when they wanted Matt to speed up.  There were several times where I thought the entire buggy was going to tip over. I’m guessing we reached speeds of around 50 mph, and the ride was completely unpredictable. We went down dunes that seemed unimaginable to go down and we took paths that seemed impossible.  I honestly cannot remember when I have had that much fun. This place has 5 well-deserved stars on Trip Advisor. If you are anywhere within a 200 mile radius of Florence, Oregon, you *must* stop in here.

We went back to our hotel room and took showers to wash off about a pound of sand. We packed up the car and headed north on 101. We arrived at the Heceta Lighthouse about twenty minutes later. This lighthouse was started in 1892 and finished in 1894. It was closed from 2011 to June of 2013 for a major restoration. It was a really cool tour, and we learned all about Fresnel lenses and how the light from this lighthouse is the brightest on the Oregon coast. It can be seen from 21 miles away, and the curvature of the earth is the only thing that stops it from being seen from farther away. Awesome.

On the trail up to the lighthouse 

After the lighthouse tour, we were ready for lunch. We went to The Bridgewater Fish House Restaurant & Zebra Bar. That’s a mouthful. And it was a mouthwatering mouthful. From the insane amount of onion rings to the wonderful clam chowder to the yummy fresh fish, this place hit the top of our list of restaurant meals during the sabbatical. 

We rolled out of the restaurant and stuffed ourselves into the family truckster. Our next stop was Crescent Lake, Oregon. Our plan was to stay the night there and then head to Crater Lake the next morning. On our way, we passed through Eugene, Oregon, where we got a second shot at getting some Voodoo Donuts. The Hummels will not be denied! 

We weren't sure what to order, so we picked the Voodoo Dozen, which they randomly put together for you. Here's what we got

Yes, that is cereal on the donuts. It's like breakfast on top of breakfast!

Hmmm...how can we make a donut more fattening? I know, let's add Oreos!

We forged ahead to our hotel, driving through beautiful Oregon forest along the way. Our hotel was great; we had a large room with plenty of sleeping spots. The hotel also had a huge selection of VHS tapes that we could watch. The girls chose Titanic and (ok....so maybe I influenced them a little bit) National Lampoon's Vacation. We had initially planned on this being an early night, but with these two movies, we pushed past midnight. **SPOILER ALERT** - The Titanic sinks.