Babymoon: Redwood National Park, Part I

Hi everyone!

It’s been a little bit since we updated you, and we have a lot of news! We’ll be catching you up on all of our current plans over the next few weeks, but there are a few major things that we wanted to share.

First, we have had to slow down our timeline on Aurora significantly. This is due in part to our need to work on getting our house ready to sell. It’s also due to us finding out that baby #3 is on the way, and due in December!

While we are very excited to share this news, we don’t want to worry our Aurora fans. She will still be featuring prominently in our future plans and the renovation will continue.

We have a few other major updates for you all, but as those plans fall into place, we wanted to share what we are currently doing! Since COVID-19 and kids happened, we haven’t been able to travel nearly as much as we have in prior years. In anticipation of baby #3 arriving, we asked the grandparents if they were willing to watch the kids for a long weekend so that Jordan and I could get away for a bit. We are currently spending our weekend in Eureka, California, visiting Redwood National and State Parks for our babymoon!

We drove the kids to Austin last night to let them stay with the grandparents, and flew out early this morning to San Francisco. We then caught a short flight to Arcata-Eureka Regional Airport. Getting to Redwoods is a little bit of a trick, and the regional airport is so small there are very limited rental car options available. We ended up renting with Enterprise in town (not the airport location), assuming we could find a taxi, Uber, or Lyft to get us there. Unfortunately car services were also VERY limited, but we lucked out with a shuttle that was able to pick us up within an hour of arrival. For those planning this trip, there is also a city bus that would work to get you in town if needed, that runs on the hour. There are currently no Lyft or Uber drivers available in the area.

By the time we picked up our little rental car, it was after 1pm. We decided to make an easy afternoon, and drove up to the Thomas Kuchel Visitor Center, about 45 minutes north. We cruised up and down the beach at the visitor center, and then headed on to do some small hikes.

We also took a bunch of photos of the information posted at the visitor center for reference later on, including tide charts and warnings.

Our first trail took us to Lady Bird Johnson Grove. It’s a 1.5 mile loop, and gave us our first look at some awe-inspiring redwoods. The trail itself is amazingly well maintained, mostly flat, and very family friendly.

We then headed just 10 minutes up the road to the Trillium Falls trail. This trail was a lot more like what we’re used to. The first quarter mile was paved, and then the Trillium Falls trail split off into a narrow, root-strewn trail with dense foliage. The light and temperature difference on this trail was impressive! We definitely got Jurassic Park vibes.

The trail itself was gorgeous, with tons of picturesque trees to photograph, root balls to walk beneath, and a gorgeous old suspension bridge when we reached the falls. This trail has the option to be an out-and-back of about a mile, or you can continue the loop which is close to three miles. Since we wanted to take it easy and I was a little crampy from the hiking (and probably not enough water) we headed back to the car after seeing the falls. We are really enjoying looking up all of the history of the area as we check out the sights!

Back in town, we checked into our hotel for the weekend, the Humboldt Bay Best Western Plus. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the rooms seem to be well maintained and are updated.

If you’re staying in Eureka while visiting Redwoods, I would highly recommend getting dinner reservations if you’d like to eat out. The first few places we called were already booked for the evening, but we were able to secure a very late reservation at the Brick and Fire Bistro.

Since our reservation was so late, we headed over to their wine bar next door a little early to unwind with a glass of wine. The place is tiny, but they had a cute little outdoor seating area with a fire pit that kept us toasty.

Jordan had a glass of the Pinot Noir, and I had a Zinfandel. Once we were able to be seated in the main restaurant, we treated ourselves to a huge meal, which is something we haven’t done since before kids.

The food was all excellent, but plan some time if you visit because the service is a little slow. We started with bread and a Caesar salad, which came with a fried egg and olives on top! Jordan also had a few baked oysters. For our main course we split the macaroni and cheese (again with olives!) and the Italian sausage pizza. The few bites of dessert I was able to manage were the raspberry lemon bread pudding, which was amazing!

We rolled ourselves back to the car to head back to the hotel, as we have an early start planned for tomorrow!

This content was originally posted on Aurora the Airstream.