August 28, 2008

Long time

So, long time, no blog... It seems like I say that a lot. But I have an excuse this time, it's been so busy around here... and... I was out of town for a week, so there! Anyway, it looks like the last time I updated was just before Aaron and I took our anniversary trip, so I guess I'll start there.

We wanted to go somewhere neither of us had been before (within our relatively small budget) So, most places were out of the question, definitely no plane trips with the gas prices being so high. We were thinking Big Sur, but with the fires they were having at the time, we decided on Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

We drove up Saturday morning, we were exhausted from staying up the night before, saying good bye to people and attempting to pack. I don't think we actually got any packing done before we gave up for the night, we did it all in the morning. After stopping by the store for some quick last minute supplies we hit the road. The trip was mostly uneventful. We did however see this truck, which we thought was pretty amazing and lots of smashed tomatoes lining the roads- how come it seems like only tomato trucks don't secure their goods?


We got to Humboldt a few hours hour before dark and decided to willingly get roped in by one of the local tourist traps... for novelty's sake. It was mostly a waste of time but we got some nice pictures, so what the hey. We made it to the campsite mostly on schedule but we forgot to take the HUGE TREES into account. They block out the sun about 2 hours before it's actually dark. So we were setting up camp with flashlights. :)

We had purchased a new tent just before the trip, and hadn't had a chance to set it up yet. I guess it's a testament to how cool a tent it is that we still didn't seem to have any problems getting it set up. The camp site was pretty much perfect. Aaron and I both think that we couldn't have designed a better set up ourselves. There was a faerie ring with a perfectly flat surface for the tent off toward the back of the site that pretty much blocked all light or visibility from other campers. The table was the perfect distance from the fire pit which was the perfect distance from the truck and the "bird box." (We didn't have to worry about bears where we were, but we were told the blue jays would have a field day- so the boxes were mostly to keep the birds away.)Pretty much the only spot in the campsite that let any light from other campers in was the perfect spot for our clothes line, so we just hung up towels and didn't have to worry about it.

Sunday morning we woke up nice and late. It was so great to sleep in. Neither of us had really had a vacation in a while. So we decided to be kind of lazy for the first part of the day and just set up the rest of the camp. Once everything was situated we went for a short hike up towards Bull Creek. The forest was really cool. What really struck me was all of the Redwood Sorrel.

It absolutely blanketed the forest floor, and was so gorgeous!



Since this was our first hike in the park, it was our first opportunity to see how awful the park map really was. Since we weren't heading anywhere specific, just up the trail till we found a nice lunch spot and back, it wasn't really a problem. Once we found our spot though, we were trying to figure out about where we were (according to the park's map). We found it very difficult and were trying to guess based on the number of bridges we had crossed on the way, since the map did show some of the streams that crossed the path. We had a fun time counting them, and trying to figure out which ones might be large enough to count, or too small to be of significance, since a few of them were basically just downed logs someone put there to make the leap across a little less exciting.



Back at camp, we had dinner. Aaron really loves the jetboil that we received as a wedding gift. That thing boils water like no body's business. We had brought along "mush packs" for our dinners and they were amazingly simple and easy to make. (That's how we refer to the freeze-dried back packer's meals) Most of them are really good and not too expensive either. We especially like the ones from Mountain House. We considered breaking into the cake for desert, but decided that that should wait one more night until our actual anniversary.

Next post, Monday and Tuesday. :)