Happiness Is: Redwoods

I forgot to put this picture in my post earlier this week about our Labor Day weekend, of sun shining through some of the trees overlooking our campsite. I seriously love redwood trees! There's something about them that is just so serene and calming--they've been standing there for hundreds of years, just watching the world go by. I think this weekend I would like to mimic the stunning redwoods and have a serene, do nothing few days. It probably won't happen, but it's nice to think about!

Anyone else out there love redwoods, or any other pretty trees? I can't be the only one!

Labor Day Videos

As promised, here's more proof of how cute the raccoon, Nacho, was. The campground raccoons around here are seriously tame, as you can see by how close he was getting to us. Nothing to be afraid of though, unless you try to pick one up or something. They kind of seem to go by a "don't bite the hand that feeds you" rule.



And also the silly parkour videos. The Reverend was up first.



Then it was the hubs turn!



And K did an awesome cartwheel on the fallen log too.



Yeah, looking back at these, I'm doubly glad I stayed on the ground for the most part and just watched! I totally would have face planted or got cut on branches or something.

Tent Cabins, Masked Visitors and Parkour!

Yep, that title pretty much sums up our Labor Day weekend.

We spent the weekend at one of our favorite places in the Bay Area to camp without roughing it too much, Big Basin Redwood State Park. Just check out the great campsite and adorable tent cabin we stayed in!


After we’d unpacked and set up everything, a fatty raccoon came by for a visit. He was extremely bold, probably the least skittish raccoon we’ve ever seen while camping. He sniffed around our site, looking for food, and not really caring much when we yelled at him or stomped our feet to scare him off. We named him ‘Nacho’ because we kept telling him, “Hey, that’s not your….!” But he wasn’t listening, and only left when he realized we didn’t have any food out and wouldn’t feed him. I have a cute video of him, but can’t get it to upload on this computer for some reason, so I’ll save it for later. Instead, here are some pictures. I actually think raccoons are really cute, even though they are pests.


Saturday afternoon, “The Reverend” (his nickname because he got ordained online to officiate our wedding) and his girlfriend drove up, and we spent the afternoon hanging out and eating. Both couples had brought about twice as much food as we needed (originally 7 total people were going to come, but 3 backed out at the last minute), so we had a crazy amount of food and drinks to snack on. After a while, it was determined that the guys needed to have a competition on who could get up highest in the redwood trees in our campsite. Of course, one of the rules was they had to hold a beer in their hand, making it even more difficult.

The hubs went first. I posed under him as a reference as to how high he was.

(I was trying to be artsy with this shot. Not sure it's exactly "artsy," but I think the angle is pretty cool!)

Then it was The Reverend’s turn, who set the bar even higher.


So of course the hubs had to try again, and he went about as high as The Reverend.


And even K got in on the climbing action! I was happy to just take pictures (and too lazy to put on tennis shoes. Plus, knowing me, I would have just managed to injure myself!).


The tree climbing competition moved over to a fallen tree by our campsite, and turned into the guys acting silly and doing “parkour.” I’ve got some funny videos that aren’t uploading right now, but I’ll try to post them tonight.

(Yes, that green and grey blur is The Reverend jumping through the air!)

That night we had about a half of a cow for dinner, and awesome fire potatoes (chopped potatoes, bacon, onions, cheese and butter, cooked on the fire in tin foil for an hour). I think I’m still full from this weekend!


The next morning we were going to take a hike to Buzzards Roost, the highest point in the entire park, but we couldn’t find parking anywhere, and the trail head was too far from our campsite to just walk from there. So instead we took The Reverend and K on a hike to Sempervirens Falls and the Sliding Rock. The hubs and I’ve taken this hike several times before, and while it’s not very challenging, it’s pretty, and was nice to get out and hike off some of the food from the night before.


We went “off roading” and found a secluded fallen tree to sit on and eat sandwiches, and then found some more trees to parkour on, on our way back to our campsite (am I even using the term parkour right? No idea. I’m pretty sure it only applies to jumping between buildings in an urban setting, but we decided that if you say “parkour” before, during and after you jump on anything, it counts! Shut up, it was fun!)

(This reminds me of the Lion King! "It's the circle of life....!")

That evening, after some more fire potatoes, fire corn on the cob, and a bunch more food for dinner, our little friend Nacho came back for a visit. I think I was the only one who though he was cute though, but I managed to snap a few pics before everyone yelled at him and made him run off. Probably to some other campsite that appreciated his cuteness!


The next morning we pretty much just threw everything in the car, headed out and were home by noon. I’ve mentioned it before, but that’s why I love living where we do, even though we live right in the middle of suburbia, next to one of the busiest cities in the US, amazing nature sites are still so close to get to! This is one my favorite places to camp, and a big reason why we chose our wedding venue was because of the redwood tree lined ceremony location—it reminded us of Big Basin.

What did you do over Labor Day weekend?

(I will try to upload the funny videos from this weekend once I get on my other computer, so check back later!)