Camping in Fort Bragg
We finally went on our first camping trip this summer and had a fabulous time. We headed down to the ocean (as we do every summer!), because I absolutely love the ocean and Adam has been asking for months when we were going to the beach! : ) We stayed at MacKerricher State Park which I have heard great things about but had never actually been there. New regulations require you to pick the exact site you want to stay in when you register online, so it was kind of just luck of the draw. I checked out the site map and Google Earth, but it's still hard to tell what it will actually be like. I have to stay I did a mighty good job! : ) We had a nice spot, close to the bathroom and the ocean (two musts for me!!!). I wanted to leave out at 8 am Monday, but of course that didn't happen. It ended up being about an hour and a half later! Then we had to stop for groceries, gas, lunch, etc. so we didn't end up getting to the campground until about 4:30 that afternoon. Here we are setting up camp.
Our new tent easily fits two air mattresses and all of our stuff (slightly spoiled, I know!). Here are the kiddos posing for a picture after they had set up all of their goodies.
We started a fire soon after we got there. The weather forecast before we left predicted sun and mid-60s. It was lucky if it hit the 60s at all, and I'm sure the sun was out somewhere, but not where we were!!!
Bret thought kabobs sounded good while we were grocery shopping, so here he is getting dinner going our first night there. Everyone tried everything (which was quite a feat!).
Tuesday we had breakfast and then headed to Glass Beach. For those of you who don't know, it used to be a dump site. The glass is actually worn down pieces of garbage!! Over the years people have taken tons of it, but they've now made it illegal to take the glass. Hopefully it will be there for years to come and allow others to enjoy it. Being with Bret, we of course took the most difficult way to get down to the beach. Poor little Adam was crying his eyes out -- he was a little scared of the cliffs and steep rocks!!
This is a little cave that goes all the way through to the water on the other side. Fun stuff!
Here are Bret and Briana scoping out critters in the water. They had a good time sticking their fingers in anemones and having them close up on them!!
They also collected their favorite pieces they found along the beach. Since you can't take anything with you, we took a picture instead. Briana's loot includes a crab leg and various other goodies!
From Glass Beach we headed back to the site and had lunch before we were back in the truck and heading for the pygmy forest. We had a small diversion along the way though when Briana lost a tooth! This is her fifth tooth that she has lost and it has been some time since she has lost one, so she was quite excited. She wasn't sure if the Tooth Fairy would know were she was, and she didn't have her Tooth Fairy Bear to put her tooth in, so she waited until she got home to put it under her pillow.
We finally reached the pygmy forest, which was not exactly what we thought it would be like, but glad we went nonetheless. The soil is so acidic and lacking in nutrients that trees that would normally grow very tall are stunted and quite short. There are some that are 80 years old and only 2 feet tall!
Then we headed back to the camp site again and stopped at the entrance where they have a small display of whale bones. Here is Bret looking at a grey whale skeleton with the kids in its mouth!!!
We hopped on our bikes and went down to see the tide pools. Unfortunately the lowest tide was at 4 or 5 in the morning, and that wasn't going to happen, so the next best time was about 5 pm. There's a nice beach at MacKerricher to view tide pools, so that's where we went. I wish the tide had been lower, but oh well!! Maybe next time. We found a starfish (or sea star as Adam will tell you!!). He's up on his marine vocabulary - he he!
Here they are poking around in one of the pools. We found tons of anemones and hermit crabs, as well as chitons, limpets, an eel, small fish, sea urchins and all kinds of sea plants too. We had a great time exploring the pools!!!
Once again, we headed back to camp where the boys started dinner and Briana and I went down to the beach. The trail to get down the the beach was right behind our site so it was just a short walk to get to the ocean. We walked down a bit further than the first beach and came across quite a find -- harbor seals!!! They were lounging all over the rocks right off shore so we spent quite some time watching them.
Briana and Kiah walked out on the end of the rocks we were sitting on and these seals were checking out what they were up to. I don't know who was watching who!!
The evening finally ended with dinner and then sitting around a fire. That's one of the great joys of camping -- fires (and of course s'mores!). We went to bed and tried to watch a movie on the laptop, but after all the adventures we had had, none of us lasted more than a few minutes!! We were scheduled to go home the next day, but we decided we hadn't had enough time yet so we asked the ranger if there were any open sites for the next night. Our site was not available, but the one next to us was, so we decided to stay one more night!!
In the morning we packed up all of our stuff and moved it to the site next door. I wish I had a picture of the four of us carrying our tent to the next site, but as we each were holding a corner up, there was no one left for the Kodak moment!!! : ) I'm sure the neighbors thought we were crazy!!! In the foreground is our first site, and in the background is our new site!! Come to find out we really did all that for nothing because the people who reserved our original site never showed up. Oh well -- what can you do!? The second site was more secluded and we could still walk through the other site to get to the beach because no one was there. It made for quite and adventure and that's all the kids really care about anyway!
Now that we didn't have to leave Wednesday we could do other things. Moving took most of the morning and then we just lounged around being kind of lazy. At 2:30 was a Junior Rangers meeting at the front, so the kids went to that. They got to touch and feel all kinds of animal pelts and then do work in their Junior Ranger books. I'm not sure what that all entails, but I do know that they did some pictures of animal paw prints. They both did a really good job and then got awarded with Junior Ranger pins, so they are now official!!!
When they got done, we all went down to the beach (the first time finally for the boys!!!). We flew a kite....
......and had a great time playing in the water. Luckily we stayed another day, because the first time we actually saw the sun poke out from behind the clouds was Wednesday afternoon. We would have been on our way home at that point if we had stuck with the original plan.
That night we roasted marshmallows again and headed off to sleep. 
Thursday we once again packed up camp, but this time loaded it up to take home!!! We went into Fort Bragg for lunch and then had ice cream at a place that makes it themselves - yum!!! We left town about 2:30 and it was 61 degrees. Three hours later we were heading down Highway 5 towards Sacramento and it was 95 degrees. I miss it already!!! We got home and the house was hotter inside than outside! Needless to say, I can't wait until our next trip down to the ocean!!!!
Posted in: on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at at 9:13 PM 6 comments
I'd happily give them up though if we could get all the fires around the state put out and get this smoke out of here. It would make for a much more enjoyable summer for all of us (especially the firefighters and people living in the affected areas)! 
and of course Bret had to get in on the action!!!
He got a little freaked out, so Grandy let Adam push him in the pool as well!!! Of course the water fights never stopped, with all sides having a great time! : )
He's turning out to be a little fish just like his sister!!! He kept trying to swim down and touch the bottom of the pool, but his rear end was a little too bouyant and would always stick out above the water!! 
I got a few good videos of him swimming, but for some reason I can't upload to Blogger again. I seem to have that problem often. Oh well, maybe next time! Briana has really improved this year too. She's so confident in fact, that she decided she was ready for scuba diving. She got a quick lesson from my dad and took off to the bottom of the pool. I was quite surprised, because it's a little unnerving to breathe underwater at first. My dad used the second regulator a couple of times and swam around with her. I think they both had a good time! Maybe I'll have a dive buddy soon! : ) 
Here are those cute little, water-logged fish. 
