Day 4 - CA, OR, CA, goodbye CA - Hello Oregon!

6:45 sharp - this time, Sean threatened to go on the hike without me...








His plan worked, I dragged myself up, and took down house.

Rise and shine to new wilderness that was previously scary black nothingness. For being desert terrain, it really wasn't all that hot.






Time to explore some caves!! Note the image - not the place you'd expect to see caves. That's because they are underground! Very cool. Because we were up and moving so early the other visitors hadn't made their 14 mile bumpy road venture into the park yet - so we were alone, in caves. Kinda scary, kinda cool.

After relentless teasing, Sean realized in yosemite that headlamps really are necessary - esp in caves! Here is Sean showing off his new dork gear:






The caves were great - some were really long with lava tubes on top of lava tubes, that twist in circles and into new tubes. It was creepy to look back at our path and see endless darkness. Sean saw some bats too - I let him lead ;)
But, after about 3 caves we were able to predict the rest and moved on. At this point the other tourists were packing in on busloads. We had impecible timing.

Destination Brookings Oregon. To get here, we had to go up into Oregon and then back down into the redwoods in california, and then back up the coastal road back into Oregon.....






5 hours later:





Yay!!

Seans uncle Brian and aunt Linda invited us to stay at their beautiful place up in the mountains - here is the view from their front porch:






Lindas cousin Chris was visitig too with his wife Eve and their little boy Nathan. It was nice to have conversation with people other than ourselves :)

We went on a hike up the road which went along the river and into the redwoods.
Sean had a religious experience:






This particular tree was begging to be climbed. I made it to the top, no problem!







Due to the poor economy, the state of Oregon recently has decided to liquidate some assets. This tree included:







"#9 is 12 feet wide by 128 feet high with enough wood to build 8- 2 bedroom houses". Sean and I are going to build 1 - 16 bedroom house from it ;)

Back to the house for yummy dinner, libations, a shower and a real bed!!

FYI, I've gotten a lot of emails for people trying to post comments (we love readig them), I'm pretty sure you have to just sign up for a blogger account, and then they will let you.

Quote of the day:
Sean - "I like to do my spelunking in the morning!"

-- Posted from April's phone