Big ass trees....

hello again everyone! I hope that you all (or at least some of you) are still checking in on here, living vicariously through us, so that our ramblings aren't in vain. We find ourselves together again, just a little bit before 8:30pm (11:30pm for you folks back home). The coffee table has two empty wine glasses on it that not too long ago were filled with a wonderfully smooth red called prim'a. There is a wine.com retail outlet a block from our apartment, that I can only imagine we will become semi-regulars at. Michelle is laying on the couch next to me reading the first book in a series called found, and I am about to dive into John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley.

Tonight seemed like the perfect night for a little vino and a good book. We spent the majority of the day at Muir Woods which, if you haven't been there, is an absolute must do before you kick the bucket, if only for the drive alone. You begin driving up highway 1, then turn off into Mt. Tamalpais state park. You then continue your winding ascent through the beautiful California countryside eventually coming to your summit (not the summit of Mt. Tamalpais, just the highest elevation you will reach on this particular journey. Right before you start descending into Muir Woods National Monument, you are at a place like few others on the face of this earth. San Francisco's low settling clouds feel like they are no more than ten feet above your head at this point and, for me at least, was a very surreal experience. A lot of things hit you (or maybe just me) at this point in time. You become grateful and happy that places like this do actually exist and that you got to see it with your own eyes, make your own experiences with it. And then you look to your left at the road you now have to drive down and think......shit, now I have to drive down there?!?!?! Where are the guardrails??? But whenever you sneak a quick glance off into the distance and see the beauty of what is around you, fear and nervousness are strangely gone, or maybe just subdued for a little longer.

And now onto the Muir Woods National Monument itself. This place will really give you some perspective on how small you really are. Not so much figuratively (although it certainly can have that effect on you), but literally....those trees are huge! I had always expected these trees to be big, but nobody's description can even do these things justice. We quickly decided to leave the paved path for a little more rugged terrain to really see what this forest was all about. We decided to take the Fern Creek trail is at said "beginner/moderate; steep in sections". We followed this trail up a creek to another trail leading to Camp Elizabeth. This trail on the other hand was about a half mile of snaking path directly up the side of the valley. Eventually we made it, exhausted to Camp Elizabeth to sit down and share some cucumber salad we had made a few nights prior. After almost taking the wrong trail and possibly getting lost in the woods, we began our trek back to Muir Woods to call it a day. We were very tired and worn out by this point when it dawned on us, we only need to drive about forty minutes to get home! This is where we live! Wonderful!

Anyway, time to begin Travels with Charley. We love and miss you all. Here's to hoping things are as well for all of you as they are for us!