Summer Vacation Day 7 - Healdsburg to Avenue of the Giants and Eureka, CA

After breakfast, we got some gas and a couple more groceries to top up our picnic lunch supplies.  We were planning to head straight for the Redwoods, but we made a quick stop at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery first.  I had read it was really kid friendly because it had a pool and hotel, and I never looked at it again in my research because it seemed a bit too commercial (and expensive) for the winery experiences we wanted.  But I heard it had some memorabilia that you didn't need to pay for passes or do the wine tasting to see, so we made a quick stop.  We also needed to buy a corkscrew to open the bottles of wine we had bought the last couple of days!

desk from The Godfather

car from Tucker

Oscars and Golden Globes and other awards

Ship from Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)

from Tucker

Not too far away, we drove through Laytonville!

And then we arrived at the Chandelier Drive Thru Tree.  When I started researching visiting the Redwoods, a couple of these drive thru trees came up a lot.  There are a lot of differing opinions on them ... but we decided to go for it and visit.  The kids of course got a huge kick out of driving through and loved watching to see if other, bugger cars & trucks would make it or not.  There was a cute little gift shop (with a penny squish machine that was sadly broken) and clean bathrooms and picnic tables, so we had our lunch and relaxed there a while.

Along our drive, we stopped quickly at the Living Chimney Tree and went inside.  It has been burnt out by a fire in the center and you can see all the way through up to the sky!

Once we got onto the Avenue of the Giants, we made a few stops when we saw places that looked fun to explore.   I didn't keep a good record of the names of the different groves where we stopped - and not all of them had names.

At the Visitor Center we saw the book that inspired our visit here!  And Riley was randomly wearing her Name That Book shirt that day!

These special edition Rose flavored berries were only being sold at Whole Foods in Northern California and by Fresh Direct in NYC.  I had seen an article about them before our trip and made sure to stop to buy some!  They were really good!!

Eel River at Women's Federation Grove

Founders Grove

Dyerville Giant

Founders Grove

Founders Grove

Founders Grove

Founders Grove

We spent the night in Eureka, CA.  I had booked the hotel based on location and I saw there was a nice pool area.  What I missed was that they provide free limo service to/from anywhere you want to go out for dinner.  The kids were PUMPED at the thought of that, so we took a limo to go for pizza!

giant pizza!

Leighton even went swimming with Riley!  There was a basketball hoop and basketball, so he was really keen!  Some other kids played with them, too.  We really wished we would have had a longer time there to play in the pool and to enjoy the really big hot tub with waterfall and the fire tables.