We're suckers for any kind of animal attraction!!

If you have read this blog for a while now, you will know that our family loves any sort of safari, zoo, or weird animal attraction. Well, Oregon had a great one:) We read in the book about a Wildlife Safari and planned to go on our way back up to Portland. We found it the day before we left-lucky for us it wasn't the 100 degrees they had been having, only in the 90's:)

Anyhow, it was quite impressive. There was a 3 mile driving route and then a petting part. We saw soo many cool animals. Too many to list them all. Some of our favorites were the Watusi cattle, zebras, brown bears, elephants and bison. We got to do the driving part twice so saw different animals in different spots.

We went into a fenced off area with the brown bears. We stayed in there a long time because there were 2 bears playing in the water, like in the above picture. I was thrilled I got that shot-pretty good if I do say so myself:) We had to explain to the kids that they were playing and not trying to kill each other because it did look rather violent as they knocked each other over and bit at each other.

Some of our new friends.

A face only a mother could love:)
Would you like a cheetah to lick your arm?
Have you ever seen a camel laying down? We watched it lay down-what a sight!!
The kids loved this cow-I could not pull Landon away!!
Milking (water) a cow...Spencer's faces crack me up!

I asked to kids to pose on this turtle-gotta love Spence!
My very own little zoo!!

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!!!

Fern Valley

When we arrived in Crescent City, California-after driving the entire coast of Oregon, we found a nice little hotel. The lady at the desk told Darin about the good places to go-the ones that are free, but just as good, if not better than the places you have to pay to see Redwood trees. She even drew this little map for us. One of the places she told us to go was called Fern Valley, right along the coast. Apparently some of the movie "Jurassic Park" was filmed there. It was quite a drive-very mountainous and twisty....Spencer thank goodness slept in part of it so no throwing up.

One of the places was Fern Valley-along the coast line. Apparently it is place where the river carved out these cliffs and since then it has become overgrown with 6 types of ferns. Apparently really beautiful. We decided to try it. It was a nice drive and as far south as we went in California. Landon was asleep when we arrived at Fern Valley, but we took the stroller as far as we could. I stayed there while Darin took the kids into the valley first. They were so excited to go explore.

I took a few pictures while Landon was sleeping.
It was really such a gorgeous place. So serene and calm.
Jordan came running out of the valley telling me how the walk was. She was way ahead of Darin and Spencer. In this picture she was explaining how they had to duck under some branches on the walk. She rambled on and on about what she saw. I went back in to see it with her when Darin came back and she was my tour guide. She had this official voice going on and would tell me whenever we had to go on a bridge or under a branch. It was really cute.
Our adventurous boy after he fell in the water. Apparently Darin told him not to reach down to touch the water, but he had to figure out why for himself:)
I don't know if you can see this, but maybe if you click on it you can. The water was dripping down the wall to the rocks at the bottom. I love the different colors of green.
I loved this view of the valley. The ferns were really pretty and it was so cool how they covered the walls completely.
We had to change Spencer since he fell in the water. Funny story-Darin didn't even see it happen-a lady had to tell him what happened. Once again, it was a good thing we always had our suitcases in the car. Notice on the car how dirty it is. We found a car wash that evening so the car wouldn't be too dirty when we took it back. We figured that since Oregon is so outdoorsy, they probably have a lot of rental cars returned really dirty.
We had to drive through a couple "streams" to get to where we were going. I was a little worried about our little car, but we found a shallow side.

Fun views and a cool "walking safari"

We decided to take a break from the ocean and found a little "walking safari" as they called it. You walked around with the animals and could feed them. Our family is a huge fan of zoos and animals so we loved it. Landon was hysterical because he would go up to any animal. Jordan had her heart set on petting the deer with velvety antlers. Spencer is happy just seeing animals from a distance.

Landon makes friends with the llama.
Some shots of the friends we made. There was a donkey that followed Darin all around for some reason. We got to hold and pet a 5-week old lion cub. Sorry the collage cut off a funny pic of Lanny staring down a goat and one of the 3 kids chasing deer. It was a really fun place.
I love the look on Spencer's face in this picture. He wasn't too sure of this llama. If you click on it you get a really good look.
This goat would not leave our stroller alone. He actually ate a piece of this tag off.

As we continued driving the coast we would stop at lots of overlooks. I loved the views from this particular one. The rocks were really cool.
More really cool rocks.
We pulled into a fun beach area and walked around on the rocks. So fun.
Spencer standing on the sandstone.
The Umpqua River Lighthouse. I already mentioned that the whole state is and RV park. Well I went into the museum to take the kids to the bathroom. I asked the lady about the next town and she said she was from Portland. She said they "drive the rig down and park it for a month" to volunteer at the lighthouse. These are some serious RV'ers.
Spencer and Jordan wanted to look in these everywhere we went.
The sign said this is a whale's jaw bone...whoa!
One of the nights we actually got all 3 kiddies sleeping in one bed. Usually I was with the boys and Darin was with Jordan....who had the easy way on that one?