At last, another family!

4 August 2018

My day started off at 05:45 again, with Bugsy needing a wee. She then started crying and said she couldn’t go back to bed because she’d done a slight wee on the sheet and didn’t want to sleep on a wet patch. I popped her in with Ian while I rinsed off the damp bit (which was only a small patch, thankfully) and hung it up to dry. I said I’d sleep in her bed, but she wanted me in with her and Daddy, so it was another warm squeeze for a few hours!

Once we were up and had had breakfast, it was time to pack up and head off. As we were sorting things out, so a little buggy pulling plastic carriages stopped outside our RV. I said to Cornelia to ask if she could go on it, but as she approached, it set off again. She started to have a little cry, but I said we could find out where it was running and if she could go on. We walked up to the office and asked, and hurrah, it is running until 11:00 from “Friendship Hall”. We waited patiently and soon enough the little train arrived and it’s passengers hopped off, and the next group jumped on. Cornelia was given a little pink helmet, and asked if she needed to keep her hands in (like she’d had to on the amusement park rides at Legoland), and if she could just hold on to the sides. Off they went, with me coo-ing at her looking so big and grown up!

They returned about ten minutes later and she was full of smiles. That was until I’d said she could have one last go, if she wanted. She ran back (there was one spare seat left) but the driver had already given her helmet to someone else. She burst into tears, sobbing because she wanted another turn, but when I explained to her that she’d had one go, and that was great and she should be grateful for that and happy she’d managed to go at all, she stuck out her tongue, blew a raspberries at me and stamped her foot. So, that was the end of that!! I walked up the path, and she took over five minutes to come and join me, but still crying. I can’t bear her being ungrateful and stropping like that, so she didn’t get any sympathy from me, and when she saw Daddy, she ran into his arms for comfort instead, which worked quite well, as he supported me about the being grateful bit but was able to give her a cuddle to ease her tears.

Ian had completed the RV pack up, and we set off up Highway 101, towards Crescent City, our base for the next three nights.

We diverted off the highway and drove along Avenue of the Giants enjoying the enormity of the redwood trees, some of which have grown over 300ft.  We stopped off at The Immortal Tree, which I had mistaken for The Eternal Tree (which is a tree with a 20ft room inside it, that Cornelia and I very much wanted to visit). We admired The Immortal Tree for a while, which is so-called because it has survived the floods of 1964 (the height of the waters is marked with a fish on the tree), and a lightening strike which lopped off its top.

Naturally, we visited the gift shop, leaving with another fridge magnet, a t-shirt and some stickers for Bugsy and a Christmas tree decoration!

Ian wasn’t keen to retrace our steps to find The Eternal Tree unfortunately, so that was the end of our trip along The Avenue, and we rejoined Highway 101, zooming our way northwards.  It had been a sunny start to the day, but as we drew closer to Crescent City (our next destination), it clouded over quite considerably.  The poor weather meant Cornelia didn’t have very much to look at, and she fell asleep in her car seat and slept until we arrived at our next site.

We pulled into Redwoods RV Resort (where we are staying for the next three nights) and were greeted at reception by two very cheery women, who checked me and another guy in simultaneously, explaining the campsite layout with a well-practiced spiel!

I mistook the directions to our pitch, but managed to work out an alternative route and we finally found our pitch 64 and backed into it, as instructed.  We set ourselves up, and the family that had checked in at the same time as us were on the pitch adjoining ours.

The campsite map indicated a trail through the trees, so we went off to stretch our legs and have a little look around.  It was a slightly overgrown trail, but with a clear path for us to follow, and as we explored, so we found a tree with a hollow that we could all clamber in to.  Cornelia was very excited to actually be inside a tree!  We managed to extract her from the tree, with a promise of a trip to the playpark where she clambered around quite happily for ages.

With tea ready, it was back to the RV, after which Cornelia was very keen to have a fire in the fire pit so that she could have a “smouldering stick”.  Ian made a small one for her, and our next door neighbour came over to see if he could offer some help to get our fire to the same size as his… As we didn’t want a large fire that night (it was nearly Bugsy’s bedtime, Ian declined, but I have a feeling his pride was feeling a little dented…! Nonetheless, Cornelia wanted to go and see their big fire, so I took her over to introduce herself to Tess (7), Cathy (my age) and Peter (Ian’s age).  We all instantly clicked (or at least, we made ourselves at home around their camp fire, with wine and chocolate), as Cornelia and Tess became firm friends.  Peter & Cathy are from Portland (further north in Oregon, about halfway to Seattle from where we are in Crescent City) and both work for Nike, so we had plenty to talk about, especially getting ideas of places to visit for the last few days of our RV trip.

During our evening, some new neighbours arrived, with a tent to pitch.  The girls went over to offer them some lanterns, and although these weren’t needed, they were given some glowstick bracelets as a “thank you” in return.  Bugsy was delighted and danced around with them like crazy!

Needless to say, it was a much later bedtime for Cornelia, who finally dropped around 22:00 (or it may even have been slightly later than that, but by then, I’d had far too much wine to really have recorded the time…)  We also crashed, exhausted, and very very happy to have met such a terrific family.  Happy days.