I know what you might be thinking "Day 3? Wasn't the last post Day 1?" Well since driving technically took us 2 days, our first day in San Fran was actually day 3 of our trip. Surprisingly, we recovered well from the drive and were out the door headed to Muir Woods by dawn (aka noon). The amazing location of Nick's aunt and uncle's house meant we only had a 15 minute drive to get there, but heavy fog made it pretty intense. Soon enough though, we arrived at a place that made the Piney Woods of Southeast Texas look like……something not so tall (I’ll put something better here later).
(Please prepare yourself for TONS of pictures)
The main trail was a wooden path along a valley floor. There were tons of little bridges crossing the creeks, and we stopped to take pictures at pretty much every one of them.
When we first got there, the fog made the woods look extra creepy.
Trees that had fallen over the path were simply left where they fell, but they cut chunks out to free up the path.
We found a setting on Kelsi's camera that only included the dominant color of the area, so plenty of pictures will only have green in them like this one of a piece of trunk left standing.
This hollow tree was one of the MANY places we stopped for all 6 of us to take multiple pictures of ourselves.
And just a few more pictures for ya...
These trees were so effing tall that it took 3 pictures to get them all in.
At one point we decided to take a small dirt side trail so that we could get away from all of the people and see more of the woods. We quickly came upon this GIGANTIC tree that had fallen over the path, and again we stopped and took a million pictures.
One of the best things about the side trail was that there were more opportunities to get up close and personal with the trees (there were rails everywhere keeping you on the path). There may have been a rail somewhere near this fallen tree, but there was also a large rail-free area by which I made my way onto it, so I feel no guilt. We also got an awesome group shot of us squatting on the log (it looked like we were all dropping deuces into the stream) but we didn’t take it with our camera.
This is the picture of me running away before I got caught standing on the log. Yeah I’m that fast.
Our next group stop was at maybe the largest redwood we saw the whole hike. Even with two people we were only wrapped around maybe half of this tree (go ahead with the tree hugger jokes).
Again another photo op spot.
This tree had fallen over the path, so Kelsi held it up with all of her might so we could pass….until I got there and held it up with my finger.
Photo op #1000 was another fallen log that had been cut to make a perfect set of natural parallel bars for Nick to do gymnastics on. I also risked my life jumping from one side to the other for an awesome photo, but somehow it got deleted (There’s currently an investigation underway to determine what happened to it).
At this point the path split, and we decided to take the high ground. Nick, Eliud, and I decided that it would be awesome for the girls to take pictures of us on the lower path, but we forgot to take a camera so we could get shots of them up higher.
We spent what felt like the next 3 hours climbing the hills/mountains before finally enjoying a nice slightly downhill trek through the rest of Muir Woods.
At one point, we found this lonely bench on the side of the mountain. Thanks David Sarlin for making your grove so luxurious.
Once we made it back to the main trail we saw this rather large cross section of a 1,000 year old tree. They had placed markers on it pointing out important events in history between ~900 AD and ~1930 AD including: the building of cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde [1100], Columbus sailing to America [1492], and the signing of the Declaration of Independence [1776].
Our next stop was the gift shop. Outside there were multiple wooden carvings of animals (mostly bears), so I decided to ride one Texas style.
After purchasing some goodies, we decided to drive to nearby Stinson Beach and have lunch. When we got there though we felt the cold wind, saw the huge waves, and read the advisories about great white sharks….so we decided a picnic in the car would be better.
To end the night, we watched Avatar, which a few of us had never seen before. I had been reluctant to watch it, but I now agree that it was pretty awesome. I’m ashamed to admit that I am psyched for Avatar 2.
*SIDE NOTE: On our drive out to California, “Princess” Noa would signal for Nick to give her another chip by simply holding her hand out like this. I thought it was funny enough to document.
I also got an action shot of the exchange.
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