Smithsonian: 3 down, eternity to go!

Clearly, this is WAY overdue, but better late than never, right?!

It was August 9th, 2006 when our sealer in the SLC temple said something about us going to "infinity and beyond," and let me tell you, we are well on our way! Originally, we had planned a trip to NYC for our 3rd anniversary, but long story short: it fell through at the last minute. We had no idea when we woke up where exactly we'd be going, but we found a pretty sweet list of "25 things to do on the Redwood Coast," so we decided to see how many of those things we could cross off the list in a long weekend. We knocked out 16 - it was AWESOME!!! I'd never been to No. Cali before, and can I just say that it's beautiful!!! Because it totally is. So anyway, we had a blast on this little adventure together, and we hope to make many more spur-of-the-moment/fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants roadtrips in the future! Here are most of the highlights:

The Good ol' Salt Flats
Yep, Rich seriously licked the nasty, salty, dirty dirt!

Stuck in traffic in a little town I don't care to remember the name of.

Beautiful Oregon - it was seriously so silent on this mountainside! I used to hate Oregon just because my psycho, tree-hugging, shower-hating, laundry-neglecting college roommate was from there, but now I'm over her, and I love it!

Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox. This is the one thing Jan told us about before we left, and wouldn't you know it was the very first thing we saw to the side of the road when we started our first day of exploring?!

The Redwoods are very large, my friends.
Very, very large. p.s. like my lumberjack shirt?!

And I have to say that they are seriously so much cooler than I thought they would be! It felt like I was little tiny Thumbalina in a giant's world.

The Corkscrew Tree - it seriously grew like this.
Fern Canyon...or as we like to call it...Fern Gully.

And I didn't even get a sliver! hahaha

Rich, just chasing the birds on one of the many random beaches we stopped at.

Here we are on the very same beach...loved it!

Oh man! We stopped at a State Park and toured this little Indian Village replica, and I seriously got stuck in this little hole/door on my way out!

Richard, doing a little Rain Dance inside the building w/the little tiny door.

This is him laughing at me as we were climbing out of that same building...I just love his face in this one!

Richard = John Smith Rachel = Pocahontas

The little fishing town of...I don't remember! We stopped in so many fishing towns!!!

Our night on the town in Eureka...another fishing town.
Zoltar, from the movie "Big"

Yes, I ate this entire thing by myself. Don't judge me.

Jogging along the boardwalk in Eureka.

Richard, loving every minute at the Loleta Cheese Factory. We definitely sampled 38 different types of cheese here, and we suffered for the rest of the trip hahaha but it was totally worth it!

Me, and the only souvennier of the trip...our brand new cheese slicer!

Here we are in the little Victorian town that the movie "the Majestic" was filmed in. We didn't know that little tidbit until after our trip, but we were still excited.

Part of the NYC plan was to visit the restaurant Serendipity, this was so not the same.

Sitting in a hollowed-out Redwood during a stop on our drive through the Avenue of the Giants.

These trees were so massive - but I kept forgetting how huge they were until we got to a patch of regular sized trees because there were so many of them!