An Ancient Forest

One of our favorite parts of our trip was seeing the Redwood trees. WOW is all I can say. They are truly amazing. We were told by the people at the hotel about a place to go and were so thankful for the advice.

This was the road we drove on to get to the grove we were going to. It was an AMAZING drive. I cannot express how unbelievable the trees are up close. We stopped a lot on the drive to look and take pictures.
This was one of the spots on our drive. We couldn't believe how big it was up close.
Here's another tree we found on the drive. We ALL fit the tree. We could see up through the sky. The kids were thrilled that we could walk inside an actual tree!
Here's remnants of a tree that fell down.
When we arrived at the grove, there was a really cute little old man, a volunteer, picking up trash. He said "Welcome to the Ancient Forest." Hard to believe how old these trees are.
I cannot say enough how impressive these trees are. I couldn't get over how high they were. I tried to get as much as I could in one pic, but they are so dang tall!!
The kids loved walking up this tree that had fallen.
This forest was a perfect playground for the kids. It was hard to keep them quiet, though. I was worried they would bother the other visitors, but no one seemed to mind.
I know this may sound funny, but it dawned on my why they are called "Redwoods." The color is really amazing. It is also neat how the park service just lets the trees fall where they may and doesn't bother them-except a couple blocking the path too much.
Like I said before, they just let the trees fall where they may. Look at Landon in the distance to get an idea how big they are.
More random pics of our walk.
Landon found a log just his size-in the collage below. The kids loved looking for little cracks and crevices they could crawl into. Notice the stump of one of the trees-they were soo huge!!


Right as we were finishing our path, we saw the biggest tree of the day! We had to have pictures in front of it to show the size. WOW!!
This is at a place called "Trees of Mystery" and is fairly well known. Darin remembered visiting it as a child. The place had a sky tram you could go on to see the trees, but it was really foggy that day, so we decided not to waste the money. We had just see the grove for free, anyway.
The following pics are of another fairly well known tourist place: Tour Thru Tree. We were so excited to drive the car through a tree:)

The kids were very excited to walk under the tree before Darin actually drove through it, which he did a few time. We had lunch there on some nearby picnic table and sat and watched a bunch of trucks try to fit through. A couple didn't because their mirrors wouldn't close up. They would drive around and backup into the tree for a pic.

Funny side note here. We saw a rental car identical to ours, and Darin looked at the license plate. We both had CA plates and our license plate numbers were only one number different-the last number!! How funny. They had to have been purchased and licensed at the same time.

This is our little car- a Dodge Calibur.

My advice to you: If you are ever anywhere near the Redwoods-even a couple hours drive-GO GO Go-you will NOT be disappointed!!!