Tuesday: Drive home

 No pictures of the drive home.  I think at this point we all felt like the vacation was over and it was just a normal drive back from Utah.  It was pretty uneventful and nice to just get home and get settled into summer.

This vacation was absolutely perfect.  I am so grateful for Jason for having the vision, energy, grit, money, patience, endurance, and ability to plan such an extensive trip.  It was exactly what we needed.

And with that.... we got home and summer was in full swing.  We had about 24 hours to turn around and get the older 3 to youth conference.  So into summer we launch...

Monday: Utah

Salt Lake City was a natural stopping place between the California coast and Denver.  We stopped and spent Sunday night to Tuesday morning with my parents.  During our stay we had a chance to relax and talk to family about our trip.  We didn't go do anything (as we usually do when we visit Utah) we just hung out at my parents house.  It was lovely.

Dane and Eve picked strawberries.

We had some family come over to visit.  We played, ate ice cream, and chatted.  I did some laundry and cleaned out the van - which felt amazing.

That evening Jason and I went out to visit an old friend that we reunited with from our high school reunion, Bubba (Daniel) Grant and his wife.  I didn't get a picture, but I did want to document it.
 

Sunday: Drive across Nevada!

We left Sacramento Sunday morning and took our longest drive of the trip (over 11 hours) and drove straight through Eastern California, Nevada, and Western Utah.  We considered stopping at the Salt Flats but ultimately we decided to embrace the reality that Nevada and Western Utah is a barren waste land and our time was better spent just getting closer to home.  haha.  It was a Sunday and I had my kids trapped in a car for the whole day so I took the opportunity to play some favorite talks and Maddie commandeered the voting process and "forced" everyone to watch "The Other Side of Heaven." 

And that is all I have to say about that! Ha
 

Saturday: California, Redwood Forest and Drew

Saturday morning we started heading down the California coast.  We didn't plan to do much in California, but the one thing we did want to see was the Redwoods.  This was Brock's main thing that he wanted to see.  Funnily enough, it was one of the last things on my list.  I really didn't have a desire to go, but it ended up being one of my most favorite things. 

Brock with his trees

This is "the big one"

We went on the most magical hike.  It felt like I was a fairy in a fairy garden forest.  Like this was a regular forest and I was tiny.  It was so quiet and different than any other forest I have been in.  It really felt a little "out of this world".

We made it to a perfectly wonderful waterfall that was just made to be played in.  We didn't play in it for logistical reasons, but I  really wanted to!

these two!  kills me!

After the Redwoods we took along winding drive through the Sierra Nevadas.   We were headed to Sacramento for the night.  I will take this opportunity to talk more in depth about our car rides.  First off everyone did great!  Especially Dane and Eve.  No one got sick, no one  threw up, and no one had a melt down.  I was really nervous we would get to a point where Dane or Eve refused to get back in the car, but it never happened.  The last few days of the trip Eve started to want to get out of her seat and sit in the row with Dane and Madison, and Madison didn't love that - but that was our only real car fights.  Well... except for the phone/bluetooth/ear bud  thing.  As I said at the start we collected them most of the time because we wanted the car rides to be intentional family time.  The original prompting Jason got for this trip was "your family needs 40 hours in the car together."  I feel like we started out pretty good, and we had some good moments, but not nearly as many as I had hoped for or planned.  But I (we) tried to follow the spirit and I think that we struck a pretty good balance.  We weren't trying to torture or annoy our kids - but we did want to push them a bit outside of their own agenda and preferences.  Noah had the hardest time with this.  To his credit he did GREAT the first 5 days or so.  But after that he became increasingly irritated to not have his phone with him and we just got beaten down a bit.  But some fun things that we did do: Listened to our family playlist of everyone's favorite songs on shuffle, listened to a lot of Nate Bargatze, played family history trivia game, passed out treats, told stories and taught things.

Jason has a dear friend that he met back when we were first married named Drew Berryessa.  When we were living in Provo, Jason commuted up to Draper and worked for a company called Investools in their HR department.  While there he met Drew.  They almost immediately clicked with similar outlooks on HR, company culture ethics, and a love of sarcastic, snarky, crass humor.  They have kept in touch over the years and when he found out we were driving through Sacramento he invited us to come stay at their house.  It was a little nerve racking.  They are a family of 7 and we are a family of 6 and the only people who have every met each other are the 2 dads, and they hadn't seen each other in about a decade.  But they were a delight and everyone became fast friends. 

 

Friday: More coast and "The Light House"

As we continued down the coast we stopped at a few places to see the views.  I wished we could stop at more but we just didn't have the time.  I would like to do the coast drive again - maybe in like 3 years with Dane and Eve and stop at every place and stay as long as we want.  Take like 3 days.  Each place seemed magical and I desperately wanted  to stop and explore at each one.  Jason did so much research and found the best places to stop, and he always hit the nail on the head.  At this one we saw whales, a snake, and surfers!  

We stopped at Burger King for lunch and Dane and Eve got crowns!

We stopped at some sand dunes.  Everyone (except Jason and Noah) wanted to run up and down them a couple of times - even Eve.

THEN we got to our house.  It was MAGICAL.  Jason found us an old light house to stay at!!

I think we all cold have moved in and lived there forever.  Dane especially loved it and actually hid up in the light house when it was time to leave and cried and cried that he wanted to stay here.  I honestly wish we could have stayed for at least 3 days.  I feel like we only got to enjoy 10% of this town/house/property.  

They had a game room

We went to our fanciest dinner at this adorably perfect pier seafood restaurant.  There were sea lions on the rocks and docks right outside.

There was a 30 minute wait so we played on the rocks watched the ocean.

Noah wanted to stay in the car.

We got to watch the sun set over the ocean.

We all loved out sea food!

We all settled in for the night.

Megan went on an early morning sun rise walk on the beach.

The rest of us went down later.

Brock read a book - as stated before, he really isn't into the beach.  

However, this was hardly a beach!  The whole thing was tide pools and it was amazing!  I have never seen Dane, or any of my other children so enthralled and wanting to learn everything he can.  It was an amazing experience and I really want to take him to tide pools again soon!

Dane wanted to stay at the tide pools, but Eve wanted to hike up the hill to the "real light house", so Mads took her up.