Day 5 - San Francisco

Today Jon and I had to make a decision on what to do on our final day in the Bay Area -- go to the Napa Valley or to see redwoods, which the guidebook told us we could find at Muir Woods in Marin County. The redwoods won out because I convinced Jon that you can see vineyards anywhere in the world, but California is the only place on Earth with redwood trees.



We rented a car, and in only 10 minutes or so we got onto this bridge which you may have seen in movies that take place in San Francisco.




Fortunately the only four-legged critters we saw were deer and a chipmunk.



The sun was shining brightly and making some nice shadowy contrasts.





These redwoods could be as tall as 35 stories, and are 800 years old. We learned that the red in their trunks comes from tannic acid, the same stuff that makes their bark invulnerable and keeps them alive forever.


This is actually a Douglas fir.










It turned out to be a way better trip than Napa would have been, because the high temperature was something like 90 in Napa and 75 in the Muir Woods. This is the result of something called "microclimates," which is the one word used to explain every single weather event in San Francisco.