Spring Break 2009

It is that time of the year again. Traci and I packed up and headed out to see my family in California. We planned out the trip so that we would arrive in Sacramento on Sunday night, drive up the coast and through the redwoods on Monday and hang out in Paradise until Thursday afternoon.

Our travel to California was uneventful and Monday morning excursion went off as planned. We drove from Sacramento to Fort Bragg in the morning and enjoyed some quality time on the beaches and cliffs overlooking the beaches. Our rental car was a convertible which made the trip up the coast that much more memorable. There is nothing more refreshing than having the wind whip through your hair and feeling the rain catch you on the forehead from time to time. Yeah, it rained on and off again during our drive but the faster we drove the more the rain went right over the top of us. :-)

Fort Bragg

You have to love the Pacific

Professing our love in the sand

Our coastal chariot

We left our scenic Highway 1 drive and headed inland to Highway 101 to go through the redwood forest. Traci had mentioned that she took a trip with her family many years ago to the redwoods and during that trip drove through a huge redwood tree. I broke the news that there were quite a few redwood forests and that the odds of finding that same tree were pretty slim. As we were making our transition from Hwy 1 to the 101, there was this LARGE sign that read "Drive through redwood tree ahead" and as luck would have it, it was the same one that Traci experienced as a young one. :-)

Traci re-living one of her childhood memories

We made it.. barely

We spent the next few hours getting in and out of the car to gawk at the monster redwoods and walk through the forest. The time spent out there was priceless! A light mist was falling, the wind was whipping through the tops of the trees, and the sound of the river could be heard when we were walking around.

Where the redwood trees live

One of many small rivers running through the redwoods

Redwood, fern, and us

I mapped our route in Kansas City and so far everything was going as planned. We were on time and about where I thought where we would be at 4 in the afternoon. According to the map, the most direct route to Paradise was Highway 36 and based on how fast we had been driving we should have been able to cover this distance in a couple of hours. That was before we knew that it was an old logging road that went right over the tops of the mountains and was nothing but curves. If you have been on a curvy road before, you have seen the 25mph warning signs for sharp corners. This road had them every 1/4 mile and the slowest warning was 10mph. We experienced the following during our 4 hour journey: Stripped cars, the lines disappeared from the road for several miles, clouds on the road, snow, rain, and unbelievable views.

We eventually made it to Paradise after spending 13 hours in the car and were able to spend some quality time with the family.

Hope your Spring Break was as exciting and memorable as ours.

Bill and Traci