Forest and Shore...

Ventured up into Muir Woods. The winding roads leading up to the park were beautiful, lined with tall trees in some places, and angular, wind-swept dwarfed trees in others.

My first visit to the redwoods (that I remember). So breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful.

After exploring the woods for a while, we left in search of the ocean. Down the winding road again...
We arrived at a deserted overlook. On the way down the stairs towards the end of the look out spot, Bodhi sang a song "water, water, water, water" - it's the first time he's been to the ocean while awake - and when we got to see the great expanse of water that is the ocean, he stared in wonder and said "Super Water", which I think is a much better name for it and will be calling it that from now on.

There was no clear pathway down the cliffs to the beach, so we climbed back in the car on a quest to get closer to the Super Water.
We walked back past these pristine estuaries, and arrived on the beach, where what looked like copious amounts of trash had washed up. It looked like all these plastic 'things' - I really had no idea what they were, and I'd recently watched some of the Midway/plastic documentaries and I saw a condom mixed amongst some of the first piles I looked at, so...
It turned out to be a huge beaching of Velella velella jellyfish - beautiful even in death (and I was so much happier to learn they were not plastic trash, ha ha!).

Finally, we drove back into Oakland, and then to Mountain View. Bodhi seemed to be very thankful towards his feet, as he kept kissing them :) We were all pretty exhausted by the time we got to our hotel.