Eureka!

I'm on furlough this week, so Tak took vacation and we headed up the coast! We took a little detour on day one so that I could see the giant California redwoods.

Chandelier (drive-thru) Tree was our first stop. There wasn't much else in this park, but I felt like driving through a tree was part of the California nature experience. Probably something I'll only need to do once, but an experience nonetheless.

Plus the gift shop was playing some serious jams and it had these incredible boxes. As you can see, pretty much every one was awesome in its own, amazing way.

The wolf box was probably my fave, but there was definitely some fierce competition (e.g. booty bank).

Next up was Avenue of the Giants. We took a little walk around Founders Grove. Tak and I both brought our nice cameras and many pictures were taken (photo-off coming up).

big trees

for realz

Many of the trees had little openings where you could crawl inside. I thought this was super exciting.

Tak's feet (from inside)

My feet (inside)

tree excitement

seriously, check this out.

I thought this was like the most beautiful river ever.

river + Tak!

After our nature time, we stopped by Loleta to sample some cheese at their cheese factory.

Production was done for the day, but they still had plenty of samples. (Seriously, like 38.)

Just one of the cheese cases. Yum!

Cheese!

After the cheese factory, we headed up to Eureka(!), which I expected to be way cooler than it was. Although the town itself was kind of boring, we did see some spectacular Victorian mansions.

The Carter House

This seemed to also be called the Carter House. Maybe Carter had two houses.

This is actually a bed and breakfast. It would be fun to stay there if Eureka didn't suck.

We stayed up the road in Arcata. Next up: PORTLAND!