Road Trip Day 3: The Northern California Coast

When we left San Francisco around 2pm on Monday, we were headed North to Humboldt County. Even though we were going up the coast, we estimated it would only take us 5-6 hours to get to our hotel near the Redwoods. Boy were we wrong...

Before I go on, I want to say if you've never been up the California coast, you're definitely missing out. It's absolutely beautiful and I think everyone should experience it once in their lifetime. With that being said, I will never do it again! Now, I already have terrible, crippling anxiety in my day-to-day life, so imagine me stuck in a car with my 1 year old driving on a 1-way road on the side of the tallest cliff you could ever imagine. We just kept climbing higher and higher and pretty soon we couldn't even see the bottom of the cliff anymore, just ocean as far as the eye can see. We were literally driving inside the clouds. Not only that, but with the windy roads we were only able to go 15-20 miles an hour at all times. I thought I was going to die. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I would have traded my first born son for a Xanax. Okay, maybe not but I was that close. It literally took us 5 hours to go 100 miles. 100 MILES. THEN we got lost in the creepiest deserted town in the middle of NOWHERE and couldn't we find the highway for almost 30 minutes. (Keep in mind we had zero reception out here so we couldn't use our phones) We finally arrived in Fort Bragg, which is about halfway to Humboldt, at 8pm to stop and eat and stretch our legs. During dinner we decided we were going to forgo our original plan to take the coast all the way to Oregon (I shudder to imagine driving those cliffs in the pitch dark) and instead we'd just jump over to the 5 until we reach Humboldt. Let me tell you, I am SO glad we did. We finally arrived at our hotel around 2am that night. 12 hours later.

After all that, I'm still glad we got to see almost the entire California coast. Like I said, I think it's something everyone should experience at least once. As scary as the cliffs were, the scenery is absolutely breathtaking. The beaches up north are so different then I'm used to... They are very rocky and choppy. It's crazy being at the top of a cliff and seeing huge rock formations in the middle of the ocean. The powerful waves just crash into them and you can see the ocean spray even from that far away. We stopped several times to take pictures, it was that beautiful.

The next day we were up early to explore the Redwoods. The forest was my absolute favorite part of our trip, you'll see why tomorrow! XOXO