Muir Woods: Bootjack Trail

We've hiked a few times out at Muir Woods lately. I have finally sprung for the yearly pass because there are a lot of trails around there, and we like hiking in the redwoods. It was only $20, so its a bargain anyway. Either Tim or I can take a carload there anytime for the next year and no one pays. Not sure where we'd get a carload of hikers though! This was a good hike, around 8 miles I think. The uphill portion was mostly at the beginning, so the last half was mostly downhill. A very pretty stream is visible a lot of the time, with a couple of very small waterfalls that would be better in rainy season. The weird thing on this hike was the ladybugs. I had read in one of my guidebooks that sometimes you will see large numbers of ladybugs congregating near trails, but I wasn't quite prepared for seeing it! Tim and I felt like we were in some creepy horror bug movie...you couldn't walk without crunching bunches of them, though we tried not to! They were also flying all over the place in some spots, and they would land on us by the dozens. We just brushed them off once in a while and kept moving until we were out of ladybug territory!

Marin Headlands: Miwok trail through Gerbode Valley

Since the weather here in San Francisco is so often foggy and miserable, and plus the fact that it can change really quickly, I've started keeping a couple of hiking plans in the car all the time. They come in very handy when we head off to the beach and end up in the fog instead! This was one of those days. By the time we ended the hike there was some sun and we still managed to go to the beach for a while. This was a pleasant hike, saw some cool hawks swooping right above us, but couldn't get their picture. the hike up the mountain was a lot steeper than I expected, well that or I'm getting out of practice at this! A good hike, but nothing too spectacular.

Russian River Canoeing

The weather hadn't been very good, so Tim and I took off to the Russian River at Healdsburg to go canoeing. We decided to take the longest trip, which had a stipulation that you had to reach the 2/3 mark by 3 pm in order to go on and finish the rest of the trip. The entire trip was about 16 miles downriver. It was a beautiful day on the river, weather was warm but not hot. Every time we came to a big curve in the river with rapids we ended up turning around backwards and going through them completely turned around! We went through lots of branches that way (mostly me), but we never turned over so we decided that was the just the way it was meant to be!

One thing on the trip was really annoying... when we left one of the guides made a comment that we "probably wouldn't make it all the way", when we ended up getting to the 2/3 spot FIRST (before like 25 younger people) the guy said that was "amazing, considering..." and then at the end they again seemed really surprised that we beat everyone else into the finish line. We're NOT that old...LOL

All in all... a very good day. Oh, and on the way home we stopped at the Premium Outlet Stores in Petaluma and went shopping!

Big Basin Redwoods State Park: The Waterfall Loop

Tim and I decided to give this hike a try last Saturday and I'm glad we did. We weren't sure that there would be much water at the waterfalls, but it was supposed to be one of the best hikes in the Bay area. It was about an hour and a half's drive from San Francisco, unfortunately kind of a curvy road a lot of the way, and Tim doesn't like that! I had him drive because he says that if he's driving he's too busy to throw up...

We started off on the hike from the park headquarters. The trail was supposed to be about an 11 and half mile loop, which the guidebook said took most people about 6 hours, though some could do it in four hours and some might take all day. We wondered which we were! You are in the Redwood forest immediately on a winding path that goes relatively slowly uphill for quite a ways. The trail became more uphill sometimes, and then would do some roller coasting (up and down, up and down), which I always hate.

Eventually, after several miles, we started a downhill into waterfall country. The first one came up pretty quickly and we stopped at its base and had our one snack for the trip. After we left that one, we discovered that there were several more in pretty quick succession, really one better than the next. We differed on which one was the prettiest. I liked the last one, which cascaded against the rocks as it went down. Tim like the one that is a straight drop into a small pool with fallen redwoods. They were both good!

Continued on the trail, which now took us up and up and up. We were both getting really tired of UP. But we knew it had to come, obviously water flows downhill and all those waterfalls took us far down the mountain, so we had to go back up. We had almost made it back to the park headquarters when I took a header after tripping over a tree root on the path. Eleven miles and I trip 10 minutes from the end! Got a good bloody knee and a dirt bath, but got right up and continued to the first bathroom where I cleaned up. Excellent hike! Oh yeah...the camel you will see in the pics...we don't know what it was doing there, but as we left the park a woman was leading the camel down the middle of the road, don't have any idea why! It was odd.