Say Hi to Caesar

Muir Woods is a park close to San Francisco where you can go to see the famous giant Redwood trees of California. It's featured heavily as the place where ape Caesar loved to visit in the recent movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Well, at least the idea of it is. What's actually depicted in the movie is more like a fusion of the Muir Woods and the Marin Headlands, and isn't really quite like either. But in any case, you can see some really big, really old trees at the Muir Woods, an environment not quite like any other -- and certainly not like any forest in Colorado. This was high on our list.

At first, it was looking like this visit might be a bit of a disappointment. For a place that's supposed to be nature at its purest, it comes off quite unnatural at first. Actually, it comes off like a Natural History Museum. Sidewalks of asphalt have been paved through the woods, lined with wooden fences on either side, providing a simple and easy path to walk. Signposts -- just out of reach -- explain to visitors the various points of interest. And the light that manages to poke its way down through the hundred-foot trees is so diffuse that the whole place starts to look like a diorama. It was neat... but not what I was expecting.


But it you keep walking along the mile-and-a-half paved loop through the forest, you'll reach a few actual trail heads near the back. Head back on to one of these trails, and you leave behind the sidewalk, the fence, and all the oddly false trappings. Now you're out for real among the ancient, giant forest.

I'd only thought to hike back up a few minutes, get far enough away from the high-traffic sidewalk for some solitude, and sit to enjoy the surroundings. But then we heard from another hiker coming down that an amazing view of the ocean could be had if you hiked 45 minutes up the trail. Well, we had our hiking boots on; we'd come to see some amazing sights; sure!

When you leave the official Muir Woods loop, you almost immediately leave the helpful map provided at the visitor center. And then you start to come to some forks in the trail. We spent maybe three minutes walking the wrong way down the wrong trail before my boyfriend pointed out the obvious: we're trying for an ocean view, the sun is setting in that direction, we should be chasing it.

The thing is, the sun seemed like it was starting to set rather rapidly. It was about 4:15 in the afternoon, and being in the already sun-challenged woods, we figured we really didn't have much time to reach our destination before we'd have to turn back, not being prepared in the slightest for a night hike. Ten more minutes, we resolved, and we'd have to turn back regardless.

In five minutes, we made it to this:


And this:


And this:


Stunning. I could have stayed there for hours. I would have loved to watch the sun set there. Except for the aforementioned issue of the hour return hike at night. So we lingered around ten, maybe fifteen minutes, got tons of pictures, and then started back.

I can't recommend this experience highly enough, if you're ever in San Francisco and up for a hike. Go to the Muir Woods, then follow the Ben Johnson Trail up to where it intersects with the Dipsea Trail. Follow the Dipsea Trail upward for about 10 minutes. If the hike hasn't taken your breath away by that point, the view surely will.