The Dale's Trails: Muir Woods, Wine tasting, and “Painted Ladies”

Erica is pretty exhausted tonight. She thought caring for 3 kids kept her busy…. Moms are worse. We went to Muir Woods to see the Coastal Redwoods. This park is beautiful but the drive getting here was deadly. Sharp switch backs and hills. I have seen many of these on this trip and these will be memorable. Erica has never experienced anything like this before and her eyes were as big as saucers.

The Coastal Redwoods are huge. These trees are so amazing. Their height, girth, and protrusions. Even the bark is different, it’s soft. The park put a sign for the Cathedral Path with a “Shhh listen to the heart beat of the earth” right in front of this tree, right in front of the path. How can you be quiet after you see this? We tried, but we kept on giggling.

After nice strolls through winding paths in Muir Woods, we decided to to hit a winery and olive press. It was so nice there. Erica tasted wines and found one good enough to take home. I did the oils. Amazing how different olive oils can be. Some are so strong that they are bitter and others taste like butter.

We wanted to find the “painted ladies”. These are homes that were in the opening credits of a show that Erica watched when she was young called “Full House”. We found them in Alamo Square. The architecture here is wonderful. The buildings and homes are either so ornate or simple square industrial type. It cracks me up to see the houses built on steep hills. Some of the streets felt like you were on a roller coaster. You crept up to the crest of the hill and dropped off. It flattened out at the cross street and then you were dropping off again till the next block. This was particularly steep in the “Crookedest Street” area.

We stopped back at Pier 39 to check out the eats. Erica got an order of shrimp to go. As she was eating them, a Seagull swooped down and tried to snatch it right out of her hand. He almost got it and it scared both of us since we did not see it coming. We talked with Frances who cooked up a fresh batch of Dungeness crab. How could we resist? We couldn’t! Neither of us had this type of crab before and couldn’t wait to sink our teeth (and fingers) into it. Yummy! We will have to take Tommy here when he gets back.