Muir Woods National Monument
An Unexpected Addition
When driving to San Francisco from the KOA, we saw signs for Muir Woods. We had not heard of the place before, so we looked into it yesterday when planning our itinerary at this stop. It is actually called Muir Woods National Monument and is an area of redwoods that has been established as a national park after a long history of trying to protect the area. When the timeline of the woods is considered, we are very fortunate that a handful of people realize what a treasure this kind of place is.
Visiting the Monument
While investigating Muir Woods, we learned that you have to either make reservations to park, or take a shuttle from the Sausalito area. We chose to reserve a parking spot and drove in on a very narrow winding road.
The hiking in the woods was really nice. We were glad that the parking restrictions were in place as it made the visit much more enjoyable with the small crowd.
In the end, it would have been nice to have a bit more time, the parking permit is only an hour and 45 minutes, which crowded us a bit. We had the option of doing back to back parking reservations, but thought we would have enough time. It turns out that it is so amazing and tranquil that it would have been nice to have time to linger more.
The park itself is not large, but there are many trails into the back country that head out of the park.