And........breathe (Part 1)

Well, we are back from a friggen AWESOME vacation. I can't get over how wonderful it was. We did so much cool stuff and it went so smoothly. Driving 3000 miles in the family car could have produced some scary results, but amazingly enough no one had a meltdown. Okay Jeff and I got a bit cranky at times, but Alex was incredible. No complaints, no whining. She was a role model for us.

My favorite part of the trip was walking on the beach. My folks renting very cool houses on the beach for our stay. You just walked down to the ocean. I really, really loved it.

We started off driving through Colorado to Wyoming. We stayed the night at Rawlins and it sucked. Then we drove through Utah and Nevada. We spent the night at Sparks, Nevada which was much better. On to California where we took the highway from hell across the mountains and we went to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The park was very beautiful and informative for geeks like us.

We arrived in Eureka, CA and spent the night. It seemed like an odd town, we didn't get a chance to explore it much because we were off on our mighty road trip up the coast on Highway 101.

We stopped the first chance we got to get up close and personal with the ocean.

Next stop: REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK!!!!

So breath-taking. So beautiful. So ENORMOUS!!!

We hiked up to a beautiful waterfall and met a very smart ranger. It was profoundly extraordinary.

We bought the Dr. Seuss book "The Lorax" and read it as we drove through. Okay, I know that is geeky. But it is one of my favorite books, and the story fit perfectly with the mind blowing experience that is The Redwoods. We are going back someday, some way.

Well, I am going to stop here for today. But there is much, much, more to come!!!

Stayed tuned.

Peace