Muir Woods and Rodeo Beach-Country: Crossed!

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Travel dates: July 2-9, 2017

And then we made it to the Pacific.

After Lassen, we went west as far as we could go until we hit the ocean, and then we had to turn around and start heading east again. But first we spent a week in Livermore, CA, an hour or so inland from San Francisco, where Dave’s sister and her family live and where his parents live during the winter. We parked the trailer on the street for the week and stayed in Nana and Grandpa’s condo. We were grateful to have a place to take long showers and a break from paying for campgrounds for a few nights, but we were also astonished by just how much stuff we had to haul out of the trailer for the week.

We went at a slower pace for our Livermore week and spent a lot of time just hanging out with family. We saw the fireworks on the 4th of July, we swam, we went to the impressive and somewhat overwhelming Oakland Museum:

…where I composed this beautiful magnetic poem:

Amy, Dave, Ari, and I went into San Francisco and saw The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (thanks to Nana and Grandpa for both the tickets (they had season tickets but had already seen this show) and the younger kid babysitting):

But we also did some more traditional sightseeing type expeditions, including a marathon day visiting both Muir Woods National Monument and Rodeo Beach in Marin County.

We’d been to Muir Woods before, all of us except Abe, but we were definitely do for a return visit. Plus their Junior Ranger badge is made of redwood!

Muir Woods is a protected patch of old growth redwoods, less than an hour from San Francisco. There are other places to see redwoods, but Muir Woods is the only one to see in the Bay Area (it’s actually part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area). We knew we wanted to see redwoods on our trip, but we couldn’t fit in a visit to Redwoods National Park this time around.

Entrance to Muir Woods is $10 for adult and free for kids up to 15.

The toughest part of visiting Muir Woods is getting there and finding a place to put your car. So we decided to bypass the parking shortage mess altogether by taking the shuttle from Sausalito. In the months since we were there, things have changed, and now you can’t visit Muir Woods at all unless you make a reservation for parking or take the shuttle. I approve of this change; I played around with the website a little, and it looks like parking reservations are fairly easy to come by if you plan a little bit in advance (or even if you don’t if you’re going during a less crowded time). And then you don’t have to worry about making the long drive up there only to find no available parking.

We had a decent experience with the shuttle. On the way there, we were able to pretty much hop right on. The main thing I remember from our last visit to Muir Woods is finding the drive up there (and back, more specifically) terrifying: full of winding roads and steep drop offs. So I was looking forward to letting someone else handle the driving and closing my eyes during the scary parts. Only…there weren’t any particularly scary parts. It was very twisty, but the steep drop offs I remembered weren’t there at all. Either I’ve gotten a lot braver or the shuttle took a different route. At any rate, the main issue with the shuttle was coming back. It was running way behind schedule, and we ended up waiting for a very long time with a bunch of cranky tired kids before we could head back. And there were way more people in line than there were seats on the shuttle, so a lot of people were stuck waiting even longer. Since they seem to have overhauled a lot about the whole Muir Woods transportation/parking situation, perhaps they’ve worked out some kinks there, too. The shuttle is $3 for adults and free for kids up to 15. It looks like it only runs on weekends for much of the year. A car parking pass is $8.

But Muir Woods!

Is beautiful!

And oh so crowded! At least in summer. But if you wander along the paths far enough away from the visitor center, you can find thinner crowds and something approaching peace and solitude for a bit.

We took the trail from the visitors center through Cathedral Grove and out to bridge 4, then looped around via the Hillside Trail, for a total of about 2 miles. You can put together a longer hike, either inside the park or in the adjoining Mt. Tamalpais State Park (and several younger members of our party were very disappointed that we didn’t do this. But several others were not, and we had a shuttle schedule to follow). And if you have young kids or mobility issues you can also stick close to the visitors center on paved, accessible boardwalks.

Going from Muir Woods to Rodeo Beach in one day isn’t necessarily an obvious choice….but it was the one that made the most sense for us. We knew we wanted to get to the ocean somehow or other during our stay in Livermore, and our Muir Woods day seemed like our best opportunity. So after we took the shuttle back to Sausalito and grabbed some dinner, we headed over for a quick sunset walk along the beach.

Rodeo Beach in Marin County is actually yet another unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. If you have more time than we had, you can explore miles of trails in addition to the beach itself.