Rough Draft

SF Zoo and Muir Woods

On Memorial Day, I took a trip to the San Francisco Zoo and Muir Woods with Dana and Chris who are here for a visit on their CA vacation. This was my second trip to the zoo, but this time I had my camera! Pictures have been posted to Flickr.

There was a huge line to get into the zoo, but once inside it wasn't all that crowded. We got there kind of late in the day, 2:30, so the parking lot was full, but we got lucky and snagged a spot from someone leaving after only a couple minutes of driving around. The African Savannah area had been redone since the last time I was there. The penguin island was of course a big stop on our tour. I've got a cute video of a penguin waddling around on land and hopping up a step that I'll have to post at some point. Unfortunately, we missed the prairie dogs since the Children's Zoo closed at 4:30. However, we did just catch the koalas before their exhibit closed. And that yielded this photo that would have Japanese school girls yelling "Sugoi!" for minutes on end.

After the zoo, we headed to Muir Woods in Mill Valley (north of SF). This involved my first drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was pretty neat. Dana and Chris took some photos and videos that I'll post later. Not more than 10 minutes outside the city, we started our windy path through the mountains to Muir Woods. It was a really fun drive through lots of narrow, twisty roads.

Photos of the woods can be found here. Sadly, the pictures can't begin to capture the height of the redwood and sequoia trees we were surrounded by. It was a fun hike, and there were numerous paths we didn't get a chance to explore. I'll definitely be going back there.