Redwoods and Sausalito

Day 20 (June 16): After a very long drive from Sacramento yesterday, we arrived in the Redwood Forest in northern California around 9:45 p.m. Definitely later than most of our nights, and our first priority was getting everything set up so that we didn’t violate quiet hours at 10:00 p.m. So we, obviously, didn’t really see much. Which meant it was rather extraordinary to wake up the next morning, step out of our tent, and see the mist surrounding the ginormous trees around us. As it turns out, most of the trees around us were actually huge fir trees that were almost as tall as the redwoods themselves. Either way, we were completely awed by them, and the fact that we couldn’t see them when we had arrived in the dark the night before.

We only had until around 11:00 a.m. to explore, so we woke up at 6:00 a.m., with the intention of taking a 3-mile hike from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m., and then planning on driving around the rest of the forest to see as much as possible. Well, that only sort of worked out. We got up on time, packed everything up that we could, and started off on our hike, with a trail map of course.

It would probably have helped if we had checked that trail map at any juncture. But we didn’t, assuming we knew where we were going. We delved deeper and deeper into the Redwood Forest, stumbling upon bigger and bigger trees, and so completely wowed by all of them that it didn’t even occur to us that we might be meandering further than we intended. I mean, these trees were so big that I took a video walking around one and it took 44 seconds. We legitimately could not believe the size, and no matter how many hundreds of pictures we took, the pictures themselves simply don’t convey it.

Not to mention the sunlight streaming through the trees as the sun rose higher and higher. And the foliage that completed the picture. We totally felt like we were walking through a Jurassic Park film, and Daniel said he wouldn’t be surprised if a dinosaur stepped out to snatch us at any moment. He attempted to hum the Jurassic Park song, but only Star wars came out.

Anyway, eventually we started getting tired, and we were checking the Fitbit (Right, did I mention, the Fitbit and ring were found?!? We were so excited! We also found the water bottle, but that actually was left behind at lake Tahoe. So we’ll see if they will mail it back to us. If it’s even worth it.), and were complaining about how the path was so much longer than they had said it would be, when Daniel decided to take out the trail map and actually check it.

Can anyone guess what we found? Yes, of course, we gone far further than we intended to, and were actually somewhere around 3 to 5 miles away from our campground. Yes, you totally read that right. Let’s just say that by the time we made it back to the campground, it was 11:00 a.m., we had gone 9 miles, and we were not only exhausted, but also starving.

We ate a quick snack, finished packing up, and took off. From there, it was a 6-hour drive to the San Francisco area. Specifically, Sausalito, where we have an Airbnb, and were planning to dress up and go up for dinner. Originally, we had talked about driving down the coast, but that would have been eight and a half hours instead of six, and we were both pretty tired and wanted to get there sooner, so we decided to save the coastal drive for later this week. Though we still got to see the ocean!

Absolutely nothing exciting happened along the drive, other than discovering another cute coffee place and me being extremely annoyed at the drivers around me for not giving way to my every whim.

We made it to our Airbnb around 5:00 p.m., and once again, exclaimed over the luxury of an actual bed and bathroom! We got all dressed up, and headed out for a night on the town. Also known as seafood and steak. All in all, it’s been a very relaxing, fun day, and I will never forget the Redwoods as long as I live.

It’s also amazing how much more relaxing a day is when you only have a couple stops to make.

Tomorrow, however, is not one of those days. We are driving down the coast, and makung basically every stop along the way. It’s going to be great!