Endless loops of Wall- E, NPR, applesauce squeezy packs, trail mix (really just m&ms), potty breaks, seat adjustments and Siri counting down the hours was a hell of a way to hang out for 11 hours.
We drove through ocean views, sand dunes, terrifying mountain ranges and finally, insanely tall trees.
The address was Avenue of the Giants and that's it. There was no cross street, just Avenue of the Giants, which happened to be a really long highway. It was dark and I had visions of us driving forever and ever and ever and it was horrific. Charlie and I had started to snap at each other and it was getting really heated in the front seat. Steve likes to butt in whenever he can and try to be helpful, "You guys! What are you doing? What's happening? Stay on this road!"Its super helpful in these types of situations.
He waved us on and I desperately rolled down the window and yelled "Can you help us?" My desperation was apparent because I watched him put his hand on his gun and take a side step backwards and away from my crazy eyes.
"Ok, what's the problem?"
"We've been driving for HOURS and we cant seem to find Humboldt State Park, are we going the right way?"
He took another step backwards as I casually bugged out my eyes and leaned out the window, severely frantic this time.
"Um, yeah, just keep driving down this road a few miles and you'll run right into it. Have a good night."
"Thank you so much!" I screamed as he ran into the forest and away from me.
He was right. We were only a few minutes away from the entrance.
When we arrived, there was a ranger on duty for all the late comers. I ran up to her and immediately plunged into how lost we were and how terrifying the drive was and how happy I was that she was there, just waiting for me to arrive.
She nervously laughed and gave us all the information.
I jumped back into the truck with tears of joy and accomplishment in my eyes and Charlie looked at me, horrorstruck.
"Wow, you're really freaking everyone out."
"What are you talking about? I'm obviously just super thankful that we made it."
"No, you're pouring it on real thick. Everyone is scared of you."
Apparently, I don't know how to act grateful but not desperate. Now, I was embarrassed and annoyed that I cant be socially normal.We found our site and started unpacking our badly thrown together baggage. There was stuff absolutely everywhere, it was blind chaos.
We found a few headlamps and tried to work on getting everything up and stay within our site.
There were huge logs surrounding the site and unless you had a light you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Steve was grabbing some things to throw into his tent next to ours and I warned him about the logs.
We went about our business, silently huffing and puffing and throwing our sleeping bags in our tent to sleep on the ground after a million hours in the car.
I sat down on the picnic table and watched Steve walk directly towards the log, like he was going to walk through it, a ghost log if you will.
He fell over it, hard...and hilariously.
I burst out laughing and couldn't control myself.
I had to get Charlie to do the consoling because I couldn't get it together. I don't even like slapstick type comedy but it was the funniest thing I had seen all day.
Poor Steve had a huge bruise the next day from it and I couldn't even be a nice mom and ask him if he was ok, I just made him relive the incident, which incited great guffaws of insane laughter from me.
My poor children are going to be so messed up from things like this.
After we finally got everyone in the tents and asleep I realized that I was sleeping directly above a giant root which fisted me in the back for 2 nights, all night long. Karma served me a beautiful bed that I made and was forced to lay in.
We stayed in the Redwoods for 2 days and it was fucking hot. Like 110 degrees out hot.
I thought that we were closer to the beach. There was no beach in site.
We showered, napped, played cards, went to the ranger station/gift shop, did yoga, read books, went on walks and took more naps.
Charlie isn't the type to sit around and relax so he was off exploring in the truck, but seriously, that was the last thing I wanted to do after days of being stuck in a moving vehicle.
He came back after being gone for a few hours and coaxed Summer and I into going to a river they found.
We went down to it and it was disgusting. It was in the middle of the drought and it was severely low and muddy and questionable, at best. The kids hung out on shore and played in the mud/sand for a while before we realized that Summer was playing with dog poop she had mistaken for sand. We left shortly after.
After 2 days exploring the wilderness and succumbing (yet again) to feeding the adorable woodland creatures, we were off to our final destination: Healdsburg, CA for the big event.It was only a 2 hour drive. Tears came to my eyes knowing that we would only have to drive for 3 hours or so and then we could just hang out for 5 days in a killer house with a pool.
We called Charlies sister, Shannon and told her we were on our way.
We got there and realized that we had the wrong address, I blamed Shannons mom and got all irritated for a minute, then I realized I put it into the GPS wrong and felt like a major asshole for getting an attitude about it.
We arrived at the house all hot and bothered with the amount of laundry we had to do and the kids were flipping out in excitement at the prospect of the pool and Grandma Susie (who is VERY popular with my children).
I'm obviously not very good in new social situations so my anxiety level was off the charts. I tried to stay calm and appear normal. I'm not a good actress so the nice smile I thought I had on my face and the polite voice I was using turned out to be a grimace and lots of sarcastic quips peppered into other peoples conversations.
Charlie was nowhere to be found most of the time.
I quickly dropped my "nice" persona because it clearly wasn't doing me any favors and opted to go for my natural RBF, which worked out ok for me because I was at a wedding doing wedding things.
I bonded with a killer bridesmaid and the wife of one of the groomsmen pretty quickly and had a good time folding napkins and drinking sangria at the pre-wedding picnic.
In the early hours of the morning of the wedding day, I got up and used the bathroom.
The toilet wouldn't flush.
Naturally, I panicked because what else do you do in a situation such as this.
I tried to wash my hands before I came barreling into our room to violently wake Charlie up, but the water wouldn't turn on.
"Oh my God! Its the apocalypse! How are we going to get home! We need to silently gather up our things and get the kids out of here." I started making a mental list of the things we needed to get together when I realized that if there were such things as crazy thoughts, this would be one of them, then I asked myself why I would automatically jump to the conclusion that the earth was ending. What the fuck is wrong with me.
Anywho, I violently awoke Charlie to magically fix the water situation. He dumped some bottled water into the back of it and sleepily told me to calm the fuck down.
Alright then.
I tried to go back to sleep but was riddled with thoughts of the obvious apocalypse and the fact that we weren't doing anything about it.
Morning came and I opened our sliding barn door out to the living room/kitchen area and quickly closed it.
Charlie looked at me and said, "Yeah, they've been out there a while. Should we see if the Studzinskis want to go to breakfast?"
We got the kids ready and opened the door again.
A sea of pink bathrobes, makeup and hair people, and ladies in waiting were bubbling around talking excitedly. Shannon had learned of the water situation and had to take a shower at the boys' house and made, what I'm sure was a polite, phone call to the owners of the house.
The house was on water tanks and we had a limited supply.
No one told us that.
We ran past lipstick and curling irons and made our way to a New Orleans style breakfast place in town. We casually drank coffee and met up with Shannon's Aunt and Uncle and cousins. Charlie got a phone call from the bride to be telling me that I had signed up to get my hair done, which I had forgot about. We went from casually shoving hot beignets in our mouths to throwing the kids in the truck in 3 seconds.I got my hair and makeup done and didn't recognize myself.
The kids got ready and looked outrageously adorable and we made our way to the venue.
The incredibly, breathtakingly beautiful venue. It was a wedding that dreams were made of.
Summer looked amazingly angelic and Steve and Charlie were gorgeously handsome. I had to throw gummy bears at Summer to get her to walk down the aisle and Steve was pulling her so hard and fast that I thought she would fall over. My shoe strap broke and I hobbled down the aisle after the bride made her grand debut.
The ceremony was lovely. I looked up through tearful fake eyelashes to check on the kids, Steve was trying not lose his cool. Charlie was oblivious as Summer was trying to rip off Steve's adorable suspenders and rip down his pants. Only my daughter.
The reception was wonderful, the kids danced and roasted marshmallows and Charlie talked about how Summer would be doing the same thing one day and got us all sorts of emotional.
The next few days were full of mimosas and pool time, Charlie was still no where to be seen, and we all got super dark and wonderfully relaxed.
When we were planning the trip I really wanted to stay at Cape Blanco State Park, it was a first come first served sort of situation so we decided to leave it up to fate.
After camping and then staying in house with indoor plumbing, I made the executive decision to get a hotel room and leave nothing to chance on the way back.
We stayed in Gold Beach, OR and the hotel was hilariously disgusting. We slept on our sleeping bags in the beds and got up pretty early the next day just to get out of there without lice or scabies or too much second hand smoke wafting up through the walls.
We had a reserved campsite on Washington's coast for the next night but Charlie and I looked at each other and we knew, we were fucking done with family vacation.
We drove the 10 hours home and were deliriously happy about it.
So were our dogs.
Sleeping in our shitty bed never felt so heavenly.
Cheers.
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