I mentioned in a previous post in this series that intentionality was important to our experience. Much of this came from my school-teacher-wife, Heather, who had talked to both of our boys, before the trip began, about keeping a journal. They often groaned during the trip when the reminders were brought up, but we tried to keep them on task with nominal goals of capturing what moved them each day.
About this time Heather brought up another idea to me around intentionality: that maybe we could memorize some Scripture together as a family. I suggested a few passages, and the one we landed on was Psalm 8. Both of our boys got into this and really enjoyed committing this to memory over the next couple of weeks. I found myself quoting from it often, “You have set your glory in the Heavens,” when we came upon new sites and experiences.
One of those experiences was our trip down the coast from Patrick’s Point to Salt Point State Park. The boys and Heather had never encountered the redwoods before this trip, so we took a minor detour from Hwy 1 to drive down the “Avenue of the Giants.” Majestic. Awesome. Grandiose. Any adjective one uses falls short of the glory of these massive trees. Indeed even a photograph does not capture the wonder of standing next to these giants and smelling the thriving life that permeates the air in their shadows. A couple of memories from this excursion: First was our oldest son seeing some poison oak without knowing what it was. This was an opportunity for Dad, who had contracted the itchy rash several times as an adolescent boy growing up in the Bay Area, to give the family a lesson. “If you see three leaves together – leave it alone!” Fortunately for our oldest son, though he thought maybe he touched the plant, nothing materialized. The second also involved our oldest son, who true to male adolescent form, climbed to the top of a fallen redwood to *ahem* leave his mark on the ground, twenty feet below (see picture if you want a laugh).
Once we got back on Hwy 1, we were dazzled by the coastline on this famous stretch of road that wound its way through picturesque towns like Mendocino. Come back for the next installment of this blog, which will describe our family outing in Mendocino and surrounding area the next day.
We arrived at Salt Point just before sunset, set up camp, and still had enough time to get down to the coast to watch the sunset. One of my favorite memories and photos from this trip is below of our boys throwing rocks into the gentle surf in the bay. A simple delight for Dad.
