Overdue Redwood Post

I'm not sure why I didn't do this post when I got home...but here it is now. Ashlee and I drove to the Redwoods for spring break. The weather was fabulous on our drive down. We stopped in Kerby, Oregon...a must see if you are on this road. It's off 199, and I didn't even try to do it justice in pictures, you can't. Several men (from what I've gathered) have a few wood working shops and they carve and build these wonderful things from burls. It's expanded since I was last there 6 years ago. Tree houses, yurts, you name it. It is a tree wonderland.

This is our original camp set up. Our first night there we had great weather.

Mmmm melty s'mores!

The Smith river...super pretty


Our first morning it started raining about 6 am. It was not a big deal. We proceeded on a 6 mile hike. By mile 3 I was soaked through. Hey Megan remember that free Costa Rican rain jacket? Yeah it's not so waterproof. And it was the only one I brought. Which was stupid, we were car camping and rain was predicted. I did bring two umbrellas though and I daresay they were a godsend.
This is after the second night. As the sun was going down there was heavy rain, thunder and lightning. Like, torrential rain. So we hung out in the car and played travel Scrabble. When we went to go to bed around 10, I checked all around the tent for standing water, since there was a lot of that around the campsite that hadn't been there previously. I didn't see anything, so we got in the tent. I knew I hadn't placed the tarp under the tent very well, and I needed to fix it, it was raining really hard. So I am out (under my umbrella) and pretty soon I hear Ashlee say we have a problem. There was at least 2 inches of standing water under the tent and the inside was starting to get wet. We quickly scouted for another spot on higher ground, pulled the stakes and moved the tent. We grabbed towels and mopped down the inside of the tent, it wasn't too wet...but wet enough to make you pretty cold since it was around 40 degrees. We did sleep, but we were both cold since everything was damp. New tent site:

We packed up the next morning, and threw the wet tent in the back. I managed to get everything else dry while rotating them on the hot air vents as we drove. We headed to the Avenue of the Giants to see the big guys. Of course we did this:


The guy collecting the money was so stoned...and there was this poorly made collage of this cat on the side of the building as we walked up. We were thrilled to actually get to see the cat later on and get its picture. At about 3pm we decided to weigh our options, it was sunny, then rainy, then sunny. After the ordeal the night before we really weren't looking forward to sleeping in a wet tent in the rain. So we hit the road. We chose the "shortest" distance on the map. Man were we wrong. This was the never ending road. I think we were on it for 4 hours. I'm not kidding. We were in the car 13 hours that day I think.

Finally we hit I-5 and had plans to stay in Medford with some friends. We got there around 11pm. Jon in his safety first uniform, and Kayla:

Ashlee and I checked out Ashland in the morning and later Kayla showed us around Jacksonville, we found a neat old cemetery there.

So that, in a nutshell was our crazy adventure. I think I can handle cold camping. Or wet camping. But not cold, wet camping.