Mocha Ganache Birthday Cake...

We ended up staying in San Francisco for another night and left Tuesday morning.  We spent most of the day Tuesday driving up to Crescent City, CA which is home to the Redwood National Park.  Once we got into Crescent City we found a camp ground and set up our tent.  We went into town to make a short visit to the beach and to satisfy Jonathan's two month long Taco Bell craving.  We then headed back to our tent for an early bedtime.  The next day we packed up and headed out to explore the giant Redwoods.  We went for a long mountain bike ride through the Redwood forest where we felt like ants among those huge trees.  In addition to the trees we also encountered a rather large bear claw print in the mud.  That was the point we decided to turn our bikes around and head back to the car.  After our ride we drove a few hours north into Oregon and found another campsite for the night.

We got up this morning and quickly ate our breakfast amongst a large party of mosquitoes.  We then drove down the road to Torex ATV rental and borrowed two 4 wheelers.  We spent the next hour 4 wheeling through the giant Oregon sand dunes.  We had an awesome time flying over the massive mounds of sand flanked by a view of the Pacific Ocean.  Jonathan quickly became skilled at making donuts in the sand and yanking Kate's ATV when she got it stuck in the deep sand.

After we finished our fun in the dunes we got back in the car and drove very north to Ferndale, Washington.  Kate's cousins, the McLaurins, live in Ferndale and Kate has spent lots of time out here with them during summer vacations.  They have 5 kids, Anderson, Maggie, Rainey, Kennedy and Ellie. We arrived just in time for Ellie's 12th birthday dinner and enjoyed a delicious feast topped off with a mocha ganache cake made by Maggie and Rainey.  We're looking forward to a fun weekend with the McLaurin family, including another celebration when Maggie graduates from high school on Saturday.

We'll post some more pictures soon!