Abby Road: Road Tripping

Ahhh, the open road beneath your wheels. The wind in your face while going 80 mph up I-5. Beautiful scenery - as soon as you get off I-5. The world's biggest ball of twine right outside your windshield - ok, there's no giant ball of twine in CA, but we have Bigfoot! It's kinda the same thing, right? Ahhh, this is the life. A true American past time - road tripping.

I've had spring fever pretty bad this year. With all the hustle and bustle from moving and doing some light renovation on the new house, we've been going stir crazy at home. We needed to hit the open road, go wherever the wind took us, eat interesting new foods, drink beer!

So, we planned a trip to the redwoods with Shawna and Amber joining us in Fortuna later. Abby was super excited to be staying at a hotel again. She loves hotels! What made Lee and I a little anxious was that we would be staying at the very first hotel we had ever taken Abby to. She cried all night long and didn't let us sleep and the whole trip was pretty awful, and ok, she was only 2 at the time. But still. We were somehow afraid of a repeat.

I couldn't wait to share the redwoods with Abby. And that part didn't disappoint. She was actually thrilled to sit quietly and soak in the silence. She sought out a place where we could do "some meditate," which I think in her mind meant that we would find a hide out and make a fort. That's ok though. I appreciated her wanting to explore and find quiet. At some point a little kid started screaming and she actually glared over her shoulder at him and said, "I think he's too little to know how to be quiet."

I love the expression on her face as she gazes all the way up to the top of the trees. Priceless:

And I couldn't get enough of her in her little REI backpack:

We also went to two different beaches, explored Ferndale and two different cemeteries there, went to the Loleta Cheese Factory for some cheese curds, and ate and drank at two breweries. Woohoo!

Playing on the abandoned train tracks in Loleta:

Abby got to build sand castles, trek through the redwoods, explore a rock shop and all their fossils, sample a host of cheeses (she LOVES cheese), fly her kite on the beach, learn about Bigfoot (from a great book called Bigfoot and Joshua), see a banana slug at the cemetery, and climb through a tree house made from the stump of a redwood.

At the cemetery:

So why in the world would we take a stroll through a cemetery? Well, it's a quiet place for a stroll. It's also visually interesting. A great place for photographing. It's usually spacious enough for Abby to run around in free as a bird. She's rather respectful of all the headstones, and she likes to explore too. And for her little imagination to take off, she likes all the nooks and crannies and small stairwells of a cemetery. When road tripping through different towns/cities, I highly recommend it.