On our final travel day we stopped at Mt. St. Helens to explore the Ape Caves – they were lava tubes created over 2,000 years ago and are the longest in the U.S. (13,042 feet long).

To get there, we parked and hiked 1.3 miles in the slushy snow:

The cave entrance had only been discovered about 60 years ago by some loggers who were too afraid to enter. They told a caver about it who brought a pack of boy scouts with him to explore the cave. They named it Ape Cave after the ancient Native American legends of the “Apes” near the mountain (now referred to as Sasquatch or Big Foot).

Once inside, we were surprised by the massive size of the cave, both in height and in length.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to explore the tubes fully as we were running short on time, but it was still worth it!

We did spot a bigfoot-like creature. The same one we encountered at Grand Teton.

We decided to enjoy our last meal of vacation with the kids’ first visit to the Old Spaghetti factory, and were lucky enough to sit in Wally the Trolly:

We’ll follow up this post with some fun stats from the trip…

As we headed towards familiar territory, we decided to check out Southern Oregon’s sand dunes for the first time. There was a nice little hike first and no rain clouds in sight!

When we arrived, we found a unique tree that would help mark our path back to civilization.

First thing we did was hike up the tallest dune.

Aven searched and searched until he found some lost droids:

Dustin helped Aven work more on his own little movie:

Then we drove up the coast until we made it to Florence, Italy Oregon and crossed back inland to head up to Portland where we enjoyed a “pig destroyer” pizza and reacquainted ourselves with old-school Pacman:

On to our last hotel stay of the trip! Up tomorrow: lava tubes???

They say to Go Big or Go Home. We went and saw big on our way home by driving through the Avenue of the Giants and the Prairie Creek Forest off the Redwood Highway in Northern California.

This was the first big tree we encountered, but certainly wasn’t the biggest:

The kids ducked into a tree house fit for hobbits, gnomes, or small children:

Dustin tipped it over so you can see what it is like inside:

Then we drove through it:

And we met the man who chopped it down:

And his little friends who call this area Endor:

Then we met one of the wisest trees in the area (over 1,500 years old):

We thought about climbing the trees, but the first tree limbs to grab onto were a little out of reach:

The Easter Bunny even made an appearance by hiding eggs throughout the woods.

Finally, we crossed the state border to drive up the Oregon coast:

We saw some elk that seemed to be gazing at the ocean view just like us. On to more Oregon beauty tomorrow!

With Easter taking place in the middle of our road-trip, we weren’t sure how we’d keep the tradition of an Easter brunch and hunt going, but we did manage. The kids got warmed up the night before at our friends’ house by doing egg hunts. Then the next morning we found a popular and delicious local breakfast spot in Santa Rosa:

Then we drove a few more hours up the coast and were thrilled the fog stayed away today! We loved the hundreds of rock formations with crashing waves.

And spotted harbor seals near Gualala:

Then we did our own little egg hunt on a high windy ocean bluff in Mendocino County:

It rained much of the day but we managed to find many sunny spots on the coast. After a nice Italian dinner in Fort Bragg with live music, we drove many, many hours on the extremely winding roads of US 1. We all fought back car-sickness as the road twisted and turned on the ridiculous amount of curves, with fog and deer sightings complicating things. We made it to our hotel in Fortuna- stay tuned for our visit to the Redwood National Park tomorrow!