August 2011 - Fort Bragg and Hendy Woods

We started off our August in a most amazing way. We got our trip to the coast. Kannon and I had originally wanted to do that for our honeymoon, but money said "no" and we've been waiting for the right time. We started planning this trip a year ago and invited our Bake family to join in on the fun, making it a little reunion.

We left early on Friday morning, I think I was probably up really late on Thursday, slept for a few hours and we hit the road while it was still dark. It was a long drive to Fort Bragg. We had some motion sickness -thank goodness no one actually threw up, but there were headaches and yucky tummies. I enjoyed the sights of places we'd never seen before. We had a moment of panic when the suburban wouldn't start after a potty break. Thankfully it was just a loose wire. When we got to Fort Bragg, CA it was still a bit foggy - around noon. We stopped at a pizza place for some lunch and then headed to the beach. We wanted to stop at the glass beach. We weren't there too long before my mom, dad, sister Susan and her husband Stephen and sister Janet came. We enjoyed the ocean and looking for the glass pieces that have been weathered soft (although I was disappointed that it wasn't what I'd imagined - no sand, just round pieces of colored glass - yeah, not so much. We found a few pieces of flat glass, that just wasn't sharp anymore).

The girls - Mom, Susan, Me and little Sarah - Janet was taking the picture.


We tried to get a family picture. This was the best of the bunch. Kannon was making that face in every picture, was that for real? Or, and this seems more likely, he was just being goofy?


We then headed up the coast to a more sandy beach -

By the way - these first pictures are the ones from my sisters' camera. We'll backtrack to the ones I took in a bit.

We headed south and a bit inland to our campsite at Hendy Woods. We loved how much space was allotted for each site. We met up there with my other sister Nancy and her family of boys -Dave, Tyler, Colby and Evan. It was fun to share our meals and work together. We loved staying up for some around the fire chit-chat. I loved that we were at a campground with showers! On Saturday, we enjoyed the area of Hendy Woods by taking a few different hikes. Along with all the exploration of the area, Ben picked up a tick! We were able to get it off with the use of fingernail polish, tweezers and WD-40. Ugh. I was worried about ticks for a long time after that.

Sarah made this pine cone creation with stuff she found around the campsite.

Hiking Hendy Woods. There are younger Redwood trees here. Joshua inside a redwood tree.

So I tried to move these pictures around, but I'm just not that talented. These are the pics I took at the Glass Beach, etc.

Uncle Stephen and Joshua

Ben got knocked down by the waves more than once, but loved every minute of it!
(He says his "mouth got a little salty - I guess that's why they call it salt water.")

This is Joshua's "get ready-get set-go" stance.

Daddy dug a sand hole that Joshua got a kick out of climbing in. When Kannon tried to bury him, though, he got a bit upset and Kannon had to redig the hole.

Here are the cousins on our Hendy Woods hike.

Eating watermelon. That was the best melon I had all summer!

We spent 2 nights at this campground and on Sunday morning we went our separate ways. Our little family headed back to Fort Bragg for church and the rest of the Bake's went back to Sacramento.