Nate still wasn't feeling great. All he wanted for breakfast was a cup of juice. Poor kid, that stomach bug really hit him hard.
We hit the road, excited to see more Redwoods. Today we planned to drive the famous "Avenue of the Giants". Shortly after we entered Avenue of the Giants, we spotted a car pulled over roadside. If that car hadn't been stopped there, we wouldn't have noticed this place and would have just driven on past. But because there was someone else stopped, we decided to stop and see what was there. It turned out to be a memorable stop (and for more than just the scenery). There was this huge tree stump that the kids were able to climb up and into. The kids were amazed at how huge the stump was!
The picture above is probably my very favorite from our trip. But what happened just after I snapped this picture, was not my favorite moment of the trip. Kate pooped. So, I picked her up and carried her back to the van to change her. She didn't want to leave the fun, so she was kicking and squirming to get down, and I was holding her tight against me so she couldn't get down. I reached the van, and I realized my hand was wet. I pulled my hand around to look at it, and it was covered in poop. Because of this stupid stomach bug, Kate now had diarrhea, and it had squished out the top of her diaper while she was squirming, and it was now all over my hand, clear up my arm, over the whole front of my shirt, a few spots down my pants, and even down on my shoe. I was covered in poop!
I called for Scott to please come help. He was a bit annoyed that he had to come help, until he got close to me and saw what had happened. He helped me get wet wipes and start wiping down as much as we could. I got Kate cleaned up enough to stand her on the step of the van, while I stripped off my shirt and cleaned myself up. Keep in mind, this is on the side of the road, with people driving by. So, I was trying to hide behind the van while I got my shirt off and covered up with a zip up sweatshirt instead. Then I had to try and figure out how to change Kate. I couldn't just lie her down on the floor of the van, because she was covered in poop. So I changed her standing up. It was pretty difficult, but I got her cleaned up (with wet wipes) from head to toe and got her changed into another outfit. (The next three days were filled with constant diarrhea from Kate, and several clothes changes for her because of it.)
And then, because it can always get worse, it got worse. As I was cleaning up Kate, Savannah yelled, "Nate needs to go poop!" followed almost immediately with, "Too late!" Nate came over to Scott, crying, "I thought it was just a fart!" He too had diarrhea. So Scott took Nate and a pack of wet wipes off into the woods and let Nate finish pooping and cleaned him up. I finished with Kate, then met Scott out in the woods with new clothes for Nate.
And then, Scott insisted I pose for a picture on the tree stump, as if none of it had happened.
During all of the commotion, the kids had moved on to a fallen tree off to the side. As I headed over to take pictures of the kids on that tree, Owen announced, "I have to go poop!", so Scott and Owen headed off into the woods while I took pictures of the kids on the fallen tree.
The tree had been hollowed out, so the kids climbed through the bottom of the root ball, to the top of the tree.
We hit the road again. It was a rainy day, so we kept our stops minimal and mostly just watched out our window as we drove. Our next stop was Founders Grove. It drizzled rain on us as we walked the 1/2 mile loop. But, the huge trees canopies above protected us pretty well from the rain.
I couldn't believe how many trees, like this one, were hollowed out and yet still living. There was very little of the trunk left at ground level, but it still was alive and growing!
Owen's souvenir at the gift shop was this hat. He loved it! He also really loved carrying around binoculars. Cute little boy!
The Dyerville Giant. This tree, which fell in 1991, was over 1600 years old and was 370 feet tall. It weighs over a million pounds!
Trying to find the end of the Dyerville Giant. Seeing it stretched out along the ground, made you realize just how tall these trees really are!
After our stop at Founders Grove, the rain really started to come down, so we didn't make any more stops that afternoon. We finished out the drive on The Avenue of the Giants and then made our way through the California mountains toward the coast. It was a pretty quiet drive.
Owen fell asleep playing on Scott's phone. I loved the dirty fingers from eating snacks in the car.
We had a continuous showing of movies the whole drive. That really helped pass the time.
We'd had the idea that we would hit San Francisco around dinner time. We thought it would be really fun to have dinner on Fisherman's Wharf and walk around a bit. What we didn't anticipate, was how busy it would be, and how small those city roads would feel in our giant van.
We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge...
And through a narrow tunnel that had Scott gripping the steering wheel in fear...
We drove downtown, past Fisherman's Wharf, and decided to just keep on driving right out of the city without stopping. The traffic was terrible, so we spent about 2 hours getting in and out of San Francisco.
As we were driving on this road (stop and go traffic), Kate started freaking out because she needed to poop, and didn't want to do it sitting down. She was so hysterical that I told Savannah to let her out of her seat, and we'd find a place to pull over. Savannah unbuckled Kate, and Kate immediately got out of her seat and pooped. I knew she had diarrhea and knew I had to change her immediately, so Scott pulled over on the side of this road, just past that black car parked under the green sign.
I hopped out of the front of the van, threw open the van door and stood on the side of a busy San Francisco street and changed Kate's diaper, while she laid on the van floor. The doorman for the building that we'd stopped in front of (he's in the black suit coat in the picture below), was walking back and forth in front of his building, and stopped for a moment to glance in our van. He asked, "What do you have, the Brady Bunch in there?". I laughed and said, "Yep! Except they are all mine!" I finished up the diaper in a minute flat, Kate got buckled back in her seat, and we were back on our way. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have skipped San Francisco!
As darkness fell, and the roads got curvier and hillier, Kate got sick. I didn't know if it was still the stomach bug, or if her Dramamine had worn off, but she was so sick. Savannah was not happy about having to hold the bowl for her.
We finally made it to the house. It was too dark to see the ocean out back, but we could hear it, so we knew it was there. It took a while for the kids to run around and explore, while I brought everything in from the van, and got a load of puked on laundry going. We had to decide on where everyone would sleep, which wasn't an easy decision. The house had two bedroom balconies overlooking the living room. Scott and I took one of those bedrooms, and Aaron and Nate took the other. Sara slept on the pull out couch in the den, with Kate in the porta crib next to her. There was a guest house above the garage, and that's where Savannah, Josh and Owen stayed. And with that, we all settled down to sleep in the place that would be home for the next 5 days.
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