San Francisco, Here I Come!
2019-12-26
Muir Woods National Monument and Mount Tamalpais State Park, CA
Muir Woods National Monument is just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, so we rented a car first thing in the morning. On this particular day, there was only one person working the counter, and the guy three people in front of me spent at least 40 minutes on the phone trying to figure out if his insurance company covered his rental car. I think if we had gotten there 15 or 20 minutes earlier then we would’ve gotten the car an hour or so earlier and been on the road. The arbitrariness of this kept rattling in my mind; for the rest of the trip I kept thinking of all the things that might have gone wrong if my timing was different. If we didn’t get to Muir before noon, perhaps we would have been hit by a meteor or the trail we wanted would have been closed due to angry bees. Perhaps we missed a cranky badger migration by coming in December. Whenever timing hits me wrong, I believe there's another time where I missed a huge traffic jam by being 15 minutes early. At any rate, while we waited for the car, the coffee shop was making a killing as the line increased to a dozen or more groups. Finally getting through the line, we took our Corolla and headed for the hills.
Muir Woods requires reservations, which is surprising for the type of park that it is. I guess it's the desire not to devote much space to parking combined with proximity to large population centers. At any rate, you must book parking ahead of time or you’re not allowed in (there is also a shuttle from nearby towns). Luckily we booked and prepaid both parking and our entry fees before we left home and everything was smooth.
At Muir Woods the ranger suggested the Fern Creek hike. Muir is known for its redwoods, but because it’s the rainy season the tributaries coming down the mountain were flowing, causing a number of small waterfalls. The loop was about 3.7 miles with amazing trees and pretty – albeit small – waterfalls. It’s difficult to show the grandeur of these trees; you really have to experience it yourself.
After a nice morning hike we headed to the adjacent Mount Tamalpais State Park for a waterfall hike. Cataract Falls has a lot more water falling a much larger distance. We hiked about 1.4 miles total out and back. Or perhaps I should say up and back since, as I’ve noted previously, waterfall hikes generally involve an elevation change. The good ones involve a lot of elevation change. We only went about half way on this hike because it had been a strenuous day already and it was getting kind of dark in that valley. Who knows? Perhaps we missed out on getting hit by a falling rock because of the late start at the car rental counter.
The day wrapped up with travel along some very windy roads in the dark to get to the hotel. Windy mountain roads are the same on either coast; just pay attention and keep turning. In California their pothole count was way below what we would have done in Pennsylvania though.