San Francisco Day Two: Muir Woods

After a breakfast of strangely disappointing croissants from Tartine, we headed north across the Golden Gate Bridge and drove through some very twisty roads to the Muir Woods National Monument, an old-growth coastal Redwood forest.

The main park is a beautiful one-mile loop through the awesomely tall trees. 

 

Right after you walk through the Cathedral Grove, there's another optional one-mile loop you can take to a picnic area. Otherwise, you can only eat on the benches right outside of the park entrance.



Oh, you know, just napping while my mom schleps twenty-five extra pounds up a rather steep trail.



Hiking is very tiring for a baby, you know. Also Allison's face in the background here cracks me up.







On the way back, you walk along the hillside trail, where you'll find the most famous tree in the park (the one Claire is standing in). I've never seen people line up to take picture with a tree before...



Back at the entrance, a European dad asked us to help fold up his borrowed stroller. I'm ashamed to say that out of four adults, none of us could figure it out. Thank goodness for YouTube!



Next, we headed to the Marin Headlands for the fantastic view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I got directions to the visitor's center on my phone, which was dumb because we drove right past the viewpoints and the visitor's center was completely pointless. Then all the twisty roads led to poor Maggie's first carsickness incident. Oops.







But, we got it all cleaned up and then took advantage of some very windy photo opportunities.



We ended the day with crab tacos in Mill Valley, which might just be the cutest town I've ever seen.