A Babymoon to the Northwest

With the baby coming at the end of August and Mike's work schedule getting really busy with the primary elections coming up, we decided to do a long vacation in the spring as a last hurrah. A few of my friends have done similar vacations just before their first child was born and called the trip their babymoons, so . . . we're calling it our babymoon too! We planned a 12 day trip where we'd head up to Boise to visit my mom and Jill, Portland to visit Robyn and Doug, then drive down the Oregon Coast camping and hiking all along the way, then in some of the Redwoods state parks in California with more hiking and camping, a day in San Francisco to check out the Exploratorium, then into Yosemite National Park, and then lastly a visit to Christine and Jeremy and the kids before we headed home.

Tip: This is going to be a long post, so if you can't read everything I recommend you read our craziest adventures of the trip on days April 29, May 3, and May 5.


Thursday, April 28 - We started our trip right after we got off work by driving to Boise and we didn't get into Boise until 11:30 PM - apparently just after my mom had gone to bed. My mom had us park in her garage since our car was full of all our camping stuff - she didn't want to take a chance that our car would be broken into overnight.

Friday, April 29 - My mom made us some eggs and fruit and Jill made some yummy upside down pineapple muffins and brought them over so we could have breakfast with them before we left for Portland. It was so yummy! And it was fun to see my mom and Jill. Then we hit the road and drove to Portland nonstop - well except for the times that I needed to get out of the car to stretch and walk around in order to prevent the blood clotting that pregnant women are more prone to get apparently. Just an hour outside of Portland, I was pulled over by a cop for going 3 mph over the speed limit!! The cop asked me if there was a reason why I was driving over the speed limit to which I honestly responded that I just tend to drive a little over normally - little does he know that I tend to go 10 mph over the speed limit back home in Utah! Then he noticed that Mike's seat was too far reclined back, and that we didn't have a front license plate on the car. So he gave us a lecture on just how the seat belt would kill Mike in the event of an accident and how a front license plate was required by law in Oregon. Well, he went back to his patrol car and sat in there for a long time doing something, then he came back with three printouts for warnings on each of the violations: the speeding, the reclining seat, and the missing front license plate. We're pretty grateful we got off with just warnings, but geez! Talk about nitpicky! But even with the delay by the cop, we made it to Portland by 4:30 PM - just in time for Doug to come home from work and tell us we needed to jet for the game that he got tickets for all of us to go to. The game was for the Portland Trailblazers versus the LA Clippers in their 6th game of the playoffs and we had seats on the floor right behind the LA Clippers team! Mike was on cloud nine. We also had some fancy dinner in the Courtside Club. It was an intense game where the Trailblazers only won by 2 points. Lots of people were texting us saying they saw us on TV as they watched the game! Then we stayed up late talking with Robyn and Doug.

Saturday, April 30 - We had breakfast with Traci and her two littles: Jude and Lily at Biscuits Cafe. Afterwards, we walked with Traci out to her van so she could give us the baby girl clothes that Lily grew out of and we got to gabbing as Traci put Lily in the van. Then, Traci shut the door and next thing we know the van is locked with Lily, Traci's phone, purse, and keys inside! Traci, me, Mike, and Jude are all outside! But Mike and I had our phones, so Mike had the idea to call the local police department to see if they could help. And they did. They sent a fire truck who had some pretty nifty tools for getting into a locked vehicle with probably no damage. So 20 minutes after locking Lily in the van, the van was open and Traci was relieved and headed home. Mike and I decided that we'd probably had enough experiences with the Oregon public safety departments. ;) Mike and I headed to the Oregon coast via Salem and Lincoln City and stopped at several sites along the coast: Boiler Bay; Devil's Punch Bowl (but it was low tide so Devil's Punch Bowl was unexciting) so we hiked down to the beach a little; Newport Beach city; and Yaquina Lighthouse where it was super windy, so much so that our car was rocking; Thor's Well at Cape Perpetua - in fact we ended up camping at the Cape Perpetua campground that night. After we got our campsite set up, we hiked the Whispering Spruce Trail to the rock shelter above Cape Perpetua. We sat in the sun by the rock shelter for a long time just soaking it in and enjoying the amazing view! We enjoyed our campsite too since it was so lush green with a creek right by it. Not only was this night our first night camping on our trip but it was our first night cooking in camp, which we planned to do for nearly all our meals, so we had Chicken Orzo Soup and rolls for dinner.

Sunday, May 1 - We checked out the really cool Haceta Head Lighthouse where I really enjoyed all the wild calla lilies growing on the grounds. Then we drove down the highway a little farther and checked out a view back to the Haceta Head Lighthouse, but we also had a view of sea lions and birds on rocks below. Next we explored a little bit of the Oregon sand dunes on the John Dellenback Dunes Trail - where I squashed Mike's dreams of hiking two miles to the beach in the sand, that's much too far in that hot of weather - it was 80 degrees! - in soft sand, and with me being so pregnant. Then we continued what became a pattern for the rest of our Oregon Coast days: stop at nearly every beach, state park, and viewpoint so I'll just list off the ones we stopped at that we remember: Bullards State Park and lighthouse where there was a lot of driftwood on the beach; drove through the town of Bandon with really cool rocks (aka "stacks") in the ocean and beach; Cape Blanco Lighthouse. It was at Cape Blanco that we discovered a state park campground that was actually pretty cool so we decided to camp there that night. We found a road that said it went down to the beach so we drove down it and discovered that you could actually drive your vehicle onto the beach, which Mike really wanted to do. However, there was some serious drift wood that we would have had to drive over to actually get to the beach and I was nervous nelly enough to push Mike off the fence about doing it or not doing it - to not do it. And I'm glad we didn't. But the beach was really cool to walk around on. Even though the weather had been amazing for us, that water was dang cold!! While we were sitting on the beach looking out to sea, I saw some dark shapes in the water that would disappear and then there would be some spouts of water! So I told Mikey, I thought I was seeing whales! And sure enough, he confirmed it and we watched those whales for forever - well, until they got too far away for us to keep track of. After that fun discovery, we went back to our campsite, cooked some Thai Massaman Curry for dinner, had a fire, and some showers, and then went to bed.

Monday, May 2 - First thing in the morning, we stopped by and hiked around the Port Orford old coast guard grounds. Then we drove down the Boardman Corridor and stopped at nearly every viewpoint - the whole stretch of that coast was super beautiful. We ate lunch at the Whaleshead Beach viewpoint, in our car since the weather was beginning to turn on us and it was quite windy and we watched the waves pummel some rocks. Then we crossed over into California where we were quite glad to have clean driving records with no dooming warnings on our records for any future pullovers to incriminate us. We immediately headed into Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park where we walked around the beautiful and amazing Stout Grove; hiked Boy Scout Tree trail to the supposed "Fern Falls" but never found it, later learned from two guys that it's not really a waterfall at all. After we finished that 5.6ish mile hike into "Fern Falls" we were so hungry by the time that we hit the car that we ate PBJs for dinner in the car at the trailhead after finishing the hike. We then finished driving the Howland Hills dirt road (that had all the groves and hikes we did along it) through the park and returned to camp. Showers that night were the first of many adventurous showers: we discovered we needed quarters for it so we both scrambled around the car looking for quarters and ended up having to share a 6-minute shower. We went to bed and watched part of the movie, Once I Was a Beehive on my iPad in our tent.

Tuesday, May 3 - We got up early as was becoming our custom - so around 7:30 to get dressed, eat breakfast, and pack up camp and hit the road for Crescent City for gas and a grocery store to buy bug spray and ice and then we checked out the Crescent City beach and overlook. The last time Mike came through the Redwoods, he and Lane hiked down the Damnation Creek trail and he remembered it being so cool that we stopped there again on this trip and he and I hiked down it just to the old highway. Then we took a side road to the Klamath River overlook where you could see the river meeting the ocean. This was also the day we decided to do some laundry. We planned to do laundry around noon so we could make and eat lunch while our laundry was getting washed so that meant hitting a town big enough to have a laundromat around noon, so Crescent City was out of the question. But before we lost cell phone data in Crescent City we googled a laundromat in Klamath where we thought we might be around lunch time and discovered that they had one. Well, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into when we decided on that plan. The laundromat was so ghetto!!! It was filthy, full of old machines, smelled like pee and poop, half the lights were off, it was some cinder block add-on to the back of some house, and had zero signage to even indicate it was a laundromat. And the cherry on top was the two pot-smokers sitting on the curb right outside of it smoking one joint after another. Well, we decided to go ahead and use the laundromat since we were there and weren't sure where or when else we'd wanna do our laundry so we headed in with our $10 in quarters and discovered that that washers were $4 a pop! So just washing our clothes nearly sucked us dry of quarters. Then two dryers ate some of our remaining quarters without turning on, and that's when Mike knocked on the door of the adjoining house to get some help. Some old man came and got two dryers started for us and they dried our clothes remarkably and gratefully fast so we could bolt out of there as soon as possible. After the laundromat-lunch adventure, we drove the Coastal Drive Loop right there in Klamath where we saw a World War II radar station that was built to look like a farm. Then we headed for Prairie Creek Redwood State Park and drove the Drury scenic byway through the park to get to our campground. This campground was the one and only where there weren't a whole lot of vacancies and we got the last good campsite - phew! We set up camp and took a little nap before we drove Davison Road to check out the Gold Bluffs campground, and hiked the famous Fern Canyon that was exploding with ferns and mosquitos. Just as we returned to the car from Fern Canyon we saw some elk. That night we had Spaghetti for dinner and a little fire. This night's shared shower was just as adventurous - the water temperature vacillated between mildly warm and cold and it was a much dirtier facility.

the ghetto laundromat!

Wednesday, May 4 - Before we left Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, we hiked three trails that made a loop: South Fork, Rhododendron, and Brown Creek. After hiking up South Fork for a mile plus, we saw a sign that said the Rhododendron trail was closed due to unsafe bridge! What?! Why didn't they put that notification down at the trailhead before we just busted our butts (okay just mine since climbing some elevation is much harder for me than it is for Mike)? But we hiked Rhododendron anyway. We decided we'd figure out some way to cross the creek/bridge. In the end, it wasn't hard to do. The bridge had indeed collapsed but the creek was tiny so we just stepped over it. Ha ha!  We also had a little bit of rain during the hike but it was hard to tell it was raining due to the canopy overhead created by the huge redwood trees. After we finished that beautiful hike, we jetted onto our next destination and also stopped by the Redwoods National Park Visitor center so I could buy a magnet. We stopped by Patrick's Point State Park to hike to Wedding Rock and saw a pretty good ocean view, and then I took a little nap in the car while Mike did another little hike there. We planned our drive just right so we could stop in Eureka for lunch at a diner called Cafe Nooner that was made famous by the TV show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. We had the yummy pulled pork po boy and flat bread Mediterranean chicken sandwich. When we left Eureka, we drove the northern part of the famous redwood highway called, the Avenue of the Giants.When we got into Humboldt Redwood State Park and got our camp set up in Albee Campground, we were still too full from lunch so we didn't eat dinner.  Our campground was close to one of the must-see areas of this state park so we checked it out that night: the Tall Tree, Giant Tree and Flat Iron Tree. In order to see those trees we had to cross a river on a fallen and really big redwood tree. Crossing rivers via a tree is never my favorite, especially when I'm backpacking and it's a tiny tree, but this one was BIG! The only obstacle I had for crossing it was getting up on it and down from it. But I got it done. That night we also took a shower in the campground's shower facility and it was slightly better: nice and hot, fast and shared.

Thursday, May 5 - This morning, we drove the southern half of the Avenue of the Giants and enjoyed the last of the redwoods since this was the day we left it all to move on to San Francisco! Talk about a change in activities! We stopped in Santa Rosa to buy gas and get cash and quarters for future toll road fees and showers and then we went into San Francisco to explore the Exploratorium - a way cool hands-on museum where you can mess around with all the experiments and stations in there. Parking for the Exploratorium was interesting since we were in an open air lot and had to give the parking attendants the key to our car. I asked them why they needed our key and they said to ensure we'd come back to pay for parking. Made sense, but still kinda sketchy. Then we drove to Stockton where we had reservations to camp at a KOA. When we arrived, found our reserved campsite, got our tent set up, and had even cooked and eaten dinner (Chicken Alfredo with Mike's favorite (not really): canned peas), we discovered that we had a terrible smell of sewage wafting into our campsite from a nearby open sewage tank!! So we threw everything from our tent into the car loose and crazy-like, and then picked up our still-erect tent and hauled it over to a different camp site. Showers at the KOA were a bit better: Mike was disappointed in his since it wasn't warm enough for him; my shower was warm enough to feel good and to shave everything.

Friday, May 6 - I woke up to sprinkles of rain on the tent, and so I looked at the forecast on my phone and it was calling for more and heavier rain so I woke up Mike and he jumped out of bed! We had the tent packed up by 7:40 AM and breakfast eaten by 8:00 AM and we were on the road! That was definitely our fastest record of taking down camp and getting on the road. We made the long three hour and quite remote and windy drive to Yosemite National Park and then immediately headed to Glacier Point Drive since we read that they opened the road a couple weeks ago. But, alas, it was closed again presumably due to the rain storm and fog that day and the day before. So we had lunch at busy viewpoint, walked up to Bridal Veil Falls, and checked out every other viewpoint and picnic area on the one-way road into our campground. We set up camp and cleaned out our car of all food, smelly items, toiletries, and cooking items and put them in the bear food locker - and while doing that we had a very aggressive squirrel that was trying to get into our car and food boxes! Then we hopped on the shuttle to go do some of the short easy hikes: Royal Arch Falls and Lower Yosemite Falls. And I bought a magnet at the visitor center. We had chili for dinner that night that Mike was not excited about since it was watered down from water in the cooler because the container lid had popped open a little. The rolls we planned to eat that night had molded slightly. And the cherry on top for dinner was that we cooked it, ate it, and cleaned it up all in the rain. Yeah, wasn't our most relaxing dinner. So with the rain still coming down pretty heavily, we got in the tent and played games on our phones and watched part of a movie until I fell asleep, as per usual.

Saturday, May 7 - We hiked to Vernal and Nevada Falls this day. Six and a half miles. 1,900 feet of elevation gain in the two and a half miles to the top of Nevada Falls via the Mist Trail. Four miles down the John Muir trail to return to the trailhead. It took all day: from about 10:00 AM until 5:00 PM. It was a practice in patience for Mike which he passed with glowing marks; and it was a practice in perseverance for me with lots of little chants such as "Slow and steady gets it done," "Doctor said to listen to my body and it needs a sit down," and "Sariah and the wives of Nephi, Sam, Laman, and Lemuel bore children while they trekked in the wilderness for eight years so I can do this." It was a beautiful hike, and it didn't matter that it rained the whole time since the Mist Trail has that name for a reason: you hike through the waterfall spray/mist and get soaking wet from that anyway. I was tired. Very tired. And very sore by the end of the day. Mike and I took nap at camp until 7:00 PM and then made our favorite camping meal for dinner: easy shepherd's pie. Then we hopped in the car and drove over to the little village to take a warm shower with low pressure, so it wasn't that great either.

Sunday, May 8 - In the morning of this day, the weather cleared up and we made a mad dash to Glacier Point for the view of Half Dome and the falls we hiked the day before. It was AMAZING! And we had the view only for 30 or 60 minutes before the clouds rolled in again and covered up Half Dome. We were lucky we drove up there so fast since the parking lot filled up quickly and we actually did indeed count the number of cars driving in as we drove out - there were 190 of them! Just before we left Yosemite, we stopped at a viewpoint and ate lunch and then drove to Pollock Pines to visit Mike's sister, Christine and and her husband, Jeremy, and their family. Jeremy and the kids made a super yummy Mother's Day dinner of steak, fancy chicken, rice, broccoli, and strawberry shortcake. It tasted so so yummy to Mike and me after all our simple camping-friendly meals.

Monday, May 9 - And this day was just our long drive back to Utah across Nevada. Although I did have a couple more scares with cops pulling me over, but neither of them actually did pull me over! Ugh. I'm so done with that stress. :)

Overall, we loved our babymoon and had a great time. We're so glad we did it since we know our lives are about to change dramatically. And now we're back to the grind. :)