Please, sir, can I have some Muir?

When we left the city to check in for The Girl's most recent marathon, we stopped along the way to explore a little bit of Muir Woods, home to California redwoods.

Visitor traffic is so heavy that this handicap-accessible boardwalk is in place to protect the forest floor.

Redwoods are not quite as immense as the slightly-more-famous Giant Sequoias, but they're still plenty big.  Their size begs you to compare yourself photographically, to prove to other people how very, very, very large these trees are.  Consequently, along the boardwalk where many visitors get their fill of the park, there are numerous signs asking that you stay on the boardwalk and trail; these signs are usually right at the base of the enormous trees nearest to the boardwalk.  The earth between these signs and the trees they ostensibly protect is trampled flat in most places.

A moderate climb.

We veered from the boardwalk to the Ocean View Trail, which led up the valley's side from the visitors' center.  Our plan was to piece together a little loop, return to the car, and finish our drive in time to get dinner and fall asleep by a reasonable East Coast time (her EST body-clock comes in very handy for early-morning starts in West Coast marathons).

For the record, we never did get an ocean view from that trail, but we also turned onto the Lost Trail (found it!) before Ocean View reached the ridge.

The Fern Cliff trail took us back into the valley, passing a footbridge along the way.  I like that The Girl shares my compulsion to cross these, even if they are not along our path, but I was especially fascinated with this one.  Wreckage in  Fern Creek indicated the bridge had been rebuilt, and from what I can tell, both the original version and its replacement followed a similar structural plan: plane off the top of a fallen tree, and add handrails.  The second bridge had the advantage of laying partially on top of the original.

If a dentist did bridgework like this, he'd lose his license.  But I like it for hiking!

Eventually, we found a redwood which was both inviting and reasonably approachable, so we did the natural thing: we put the smaller of us inside to make it look even bigger.

No vegetation was harmed in the taking of this photo.

White Trillium

Wood Sorrel

On May 19, 1945, delegates from the United Nations Conference in San Francisco took a break from the conference rooms to convene at Muir Woods in an area known as Cathedral Grove.  They laid a plaque honoring President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had died a month earlier, and was supposed to have opened the conference.  Fifty nations were represented, and this conference gave us the United Nations Charter, forming the organization we know today.  I like that they took some time to step out into the world they were agreeing to protect, and hopefully saw one of the greatest reasons to do so.

Looking skyward in Cathedral Grove

Wood Sorrel colonizing a fallen trunk.

The hike brought us back to the Vistors' Center, where we had a modest lunch before driving down the road to Muir Beach.  Sun had intermittently peeked through the trees, but it had had its fill of us, and clouds coated the sky.  It made the beach look much more foreboding than it deserved.

We saw a surfer, families with children and dogs, tiny pieces of beach glass, and one large, dangerous shard of broken bottle aching to slice someone's foot open.  Aside from the homicidal litter, it was a very nice spot.  It's easy to see why so many people--and a few sea birds--chose to build their homes there.

Jeans are not optimal wading attire.

 It started sprinkling as we made our way back to the car, but it never got serious about it.  We had our fill, we got to sleep in plenty of time, and she ran a great race the next day.