our day trip today would be muir woods, just north of san francisco, but first chanda had class and greg took the car into sears to be checked for the return trip. (chanda is checking the bus times. san francisco has a phone app that allows you to check all transit times.)
we picked her up outside her school and headed to the golden gate bridge.
which was fogged in!
(binding off on my loop shawl.)
walkways run along either side for pedestrians, and there were a lot of people crossing.
there's always a beautiful brown hill somewhere . .
san francisco in the distance to the southeast.
to get to muir woods, we parked in an office parking lot just north of the city and took a shuttle bus along a very windy and steep canyon road. i was wondering why the manager of the shuttle service was reminding all his drivers over the shuttle's walkie talkie to be safe before our driver took off. well, we found out why! there weren't always guard rails either . . it was quite a drive up (on the inside road) and quite a drive down! i'll have to get chanda to send me one of her photos.
muir woods was astounding. it's a national monument created in 1908 by president theodore roosevelt with land given by local businessman william kent. it was one of the last uncut stands of redwoods. william kent requested that it be named after conservationist john muir.
redwoods have high tannin levels which give its bark the deep reddish-brown color.
no, i didn't count the rings, but it seems very old! most of the mature trees are between 500 to 800 years old. some are 1,000!
this is a large burl which sprouts from the base of a tree and eventually grows into a tree itself. when the parent tree falls and decomposes, burl sprouts can form a circle or "fairy ring" of mature trees around the parent tree.
the native coastal miwok people called the redwood, tc-ole, or tcobe. in the north the yuroks referred to tress as the keelch. the scientific name is sequoia sempervirens, named by austrian botanist stephen endlicher, honoring the cherokee scholar sequoyah, who invented an alphabet for the spoken language of his people.
these trees are the coastal redwoods, different from the sequoia redwoods in yosemite national park (the former are taller, and the latter are wider). the coastal trees rely on fog for moisture during the dry summer months, and it was dry! there was a fine red dust over all the leaves on the ground.
the coastal redwoods grow on a thin and continuous 500 mile strip of pacific coast from southern oregon to big sur. most of these have been cut, except for the ones protected in national or state parks. muir woods has never been logged and the mixed-age and dead trees support a diverse ecosystem.
the view from the office parking lot on the way home . .
karl the fog was still hanging around . .
getting last minute necessities at whole foods on california street before heading back to the house. we were all hungry so we still made some hot dogs and cauliflower even though it was kind of late.
her achilles tendon has been bothering her so some soaking time was required: first ice water and then hot water.
it was a long day . .
