Our First Camping Experience and Muir Woods
6/11/03
Since we're going to be camping out during our US road trip (spending
$50> per night on a motel room is a bit pricey), we wanted to make
sure that we would be okay with the experience. We loaded up our
road-warrior Vette with our tent (many thanks to our friend and
landlord Rene and his family for trading tents with us), new sleeping
bags and other newly purchased outdoor gear and headed toward Muir
Woods. The plan was to go hiking in the Muir Woods National Forest (I
think that's the official name, but i'm too lazy to look it up) and
then spend the night at the KOA campsite in Petaluma (north of San
Francisco). Now onto more details about Muir Woods, followed by a
synopsis of our night in Petaluma (writing tech papers can lead to
boring sounding sentences like the previous one -- in reality every one
of these should begin with a line saying "the rest of this description
is as follows, in section 2 we highlight..." -- a bit of paper-writing
humor if you will).
Muir Woods
This was the first "hiking" experience that either one of us had done
in quite some time and I'll be the first to admit that it was
*wonderful*. The woods (forest?) were beatiful with nice tall trees and
a refreshing bubbling creak running the length of most of the trail
that we went on. We tried to take the Bootjack trail up to a picnic
area that was supposed to be a 2 mile hike, but we never found it (I
think we missed it because it seemed like we had gone at least 3 miles
or so). Despite being unable to eat our lunch in a nice area up on the
mountain, we got to break in our new shoes and had a lot of fun. One
word on the pictures below, I have *NO* idea what that squirrel-looking
animal is, but it is *definitely* not a squirrel (living in Berkeley
makes me an unofficial expert on these creatures since they are all
over the place and we see them all the time). As Daria said, "It kinda
looks like a mouse with a bushy tail". So, for now, this create is a
"not a squirrel"...
Pictures
Petaluma Campsite
Ok, I'll be honest, this wasn't your average run-of-the-mill
campground... I mean the place had a laundry facility, a store where
you could buy all kinds of stuff, showering facilities with *hot*
water, and a heated pool and spa. I hardly think that qualifies as the
"great outdoors", but we gotta slowly work our way into this camping
thing, right? In any case, we did end up sleeping in a tent, on a small
patch of grass, so that part was pretty realistic. The KOA facilities
were really nice and we took full advantage of the pool and spa in the
evening after our hiking in Muir Woods. Interesting stuff about the
place: lots of different animals at the campgrounds, including cows
which grazed less than 10 feet from our tent, a petting zoo full of
sheep, several roosters who were confused about the time (they kept
crowing during the evening and well into night), and a hen with several
chicks who were running around all over the place. Unfortunately, the
only picture we snagged during the entire time was that of the hen with
her chicks. Enjoy.
Picture
(note the lack of plural here)
