Day 5- Glass beach

Glass Beach is the well-known southern beach of MacKerricher State Park in Fort Bragg. Glass Beach gets its name from the smooth colorful glass pieces that you can find on the pebbly beach. The site was once a trash dump so broken bottles from garbage cans of local residents are now little treasures to be found and photographed.

The boys loved this beach!  Connor and Jason searched the tide pools for crabs.  Kaiden played in the sand on the shore.  We saw sea otters and seals in the ocean.  We expected to find a few pieces of polished glass, but to our surprise the beach is covered in polished smooth beautiful glass pieces and some shells.  After several hours of relaxing on Glass beach we ventured on with more horrible twisty roads.  The boys slept in the back bed most of the time.  I felt a little nauseous from all the sharp turns, cliffs and lack of guard rails.  We stopped at a Target for more supplies, had Panda Express for dinner, and filled up on gas again before ending our day at the Elkhorn/ Vietnam Vet Memorial rest stop for the night.  We pulled up between the semi trucks to give us shade and block the wind.  The fist and last pictures are typical ways we start and end our days- Connor sitting at the table playing with Lego's.

Day 4- Eternal Tree House and Chandelier Drive Thru-tree

Eternal Tree House- Not a traditional tree house, this is actually a 20-foot room inside a 2500 year old living redwood tree.  The front of this house is entered through the hollow trunk of a still-living tree. The front door and windows are clearly visible to passers-by, and the rest of the house adjoins the rear of the tree in a more traditional style.

We stopped at the Shine Drive thru tree, but the tree is privately owned and they wanted too much for us to walk in just to see the tree.  So, we skipped it and just down the road we found the Chandelier Drive-thru tree, which is a way better drive thru tree anyway!  Our RV is too big, but we parked and walked down to see the tree. 
The Chandelier Drive-thru tree is on a scenic 200 acre redwood park.  They have tons of beautiful wood carvings all over the property too.

Following the redwoods we had a 1 hour horrible switch back, narrow, windy drive.  But it lead us to the California coastline.  We found a spot on the beach for the boys and Piper to run around and play.
There were only 2 other people on the beach with us and they had a little black dog that Piper loved playing chase with.  Although she got a little irritated that the dog was faster than she was.  She's used to being the fasted dog.  After a little fun we moved onto a different beach location to set up camp for the night.  We enjoyed the sunset while we BBQ'ed hamburgers.  Then we took a moonlit hike on the hillside. 

Jason decided to set a new trend and he's waving at every motor home we meet (like how motorcyclists wave at each other).  Also, since we installed the DVD player in the back bedroom Jason and I have started watching the Game of Thrones every night after the kids go to bed.  He bought me the box set for my birthday this year.