We said goodbye to Libby, Ari, Sam and Toby and departed San Francisco. We were sad to say goodbye but will see them in Maine next month so that’s nice. We started the real road tripping with a roughly 3 hour drive to the beginning of the Redwoods. We had originally planned to go to Lake Tahoe/Crater Lake but decided to change the plans when we learned the Redwoods would work and I think we’re really glad we did!
Our first stop was Drive-Thru aka Chandelier tree. Since we had the cargo box we couldn’t drive through it but we had plenty of fun climbing trees near it and we got to walk through it. I watched a few Highlanders without cargo boxes barelyyyy squeak through it.
Some stats on Chandelier tree:
- 315ft tall
- 21ft in diameter
- 2,400 years old
The next stop was Grandfather Tree (Brooke’s favorite). This has to be one of the biggest Redwood trees in existence. You can see just the immense size from the photo below:
As we meandered up route 101 we actually took an even more scenic route on “Avenue of the Giants”. This is a 32-mile highway that goes straight through the Redwoods. We stopped once to take a photo of the car (see below) but then all got out because of how mesmorizing it was. This was my favorite part of the trip so far. By the end, I think Jaclyn was wishing they could’ve made the road through the Redwoods a little straighter.
Our last stop for the day was Founder’s Grove Nature Trail which was a really cool hike through a bunch of massive Redwoods. This area was made popular because of Founder’s Tree which, at 360+ ft, was previously the tallest tree known to man. There were a bunch of fallen Redwoods that the kids were able to climb over or walk through. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like when one of these giants falls.
We stayed the night in Eureka, CA and got lucky with a pretty nice hotel suite. This let us cook some food for our picky kids (Turkey burgers for dinner and hard-boiled eggs as a snack lol). We had previously tried an exotic lunch (Chipotle) and we were ready to abandon the whole trip trying to get the kids to eat a cheese quesadilla and white rice…ugh!
With day 1 of the Redwoods finished I think we were all ready for more.
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