Muir Woods National Monument

 

Two Saturdays ago we woke up bright and early expecting rain as had been forecasted the night before.  We got that rain overnight but it looked like things had cleared up so we made the snap decision to drive over to the Muir Woods National Monument.  We had tried visiting there once before, years ago, but it had been on a holiday weekend or something and we had given up when we got there and couldn't find any parking and waited in an insanely long line just to drive around looking for a spot to free up. 

 

It is such a beautiful spot, especially on the day we went after a night of rain.  Everything was wet and misty and fresh.  The forest floor is covered in ferns and miner's lettuce, which Paul points out for Clara and she picks and happily munches on.  Being in the redwood trees fills my soul. 

 

The trail is actually a boardwalk, which both protects the delicate root systems of the redwood trees and makes it wheelchair and stroller accessible.  But I was glad we didn't know that beforehand because we just brought the hiking backpack to carry Rose in once she got tired and went at the girls' slow pace which gave us lots of time to soak in the peacefulness and breath deeply from the pure, sweet air of the redwoods. 

About a mile in or so, Rose got cranky so we put her in the hiking backpack and Paul carried her while she ate her snacks (string cheese and chocolate chip cookies).  And within minutes she was out like a light and stayed that way for the rest of the hike.

We opted to do a loop hike where we climbed about halfway up the height of the redwood forest and walked on a trail at that level all the way back to the parking lot.  Paul is the master of spotting banana slugs and pointed out 9 of them to us.  Clara was super excited about each one but try as he might Paul couldn't convince her to touch one of them. 

They sure are disgustingly ugly little buggers.

After spending a couple of hours hiking, we left and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to the city for lunch at Gott's in the Ferry Building.  It was a pretty perfect way to spend a Saturday and I'm looking forward to taking our next visitors here to experience it for themselves.