Day 28 (Thursday, July 22nd) Muir Woods N.M., Napa & Sonoma Valleys

Today was our 2nd day in the San Francisco Bay area. We started by driving out to Muir Woods National Monument. Our prolonged stay in Las Vegas forced us to cancel our original side trip to the Redwood National Park, so we went to see the giant redwood trees near San Francisco. We had to drive over some small mountains to get there and the last few miles, we were inside the clouds! The trees were simply majestic and we were all in awe! The trees at Redwood N.P. are about 25-30% bigger, but none of us had ever seen anything like the ones at Muir N.M.! We walked around in hushed silence, simply awed at the incredible majesty of trees that are the oldest living things on earth. Some were seedlings around 900 A.D. We went early and missed most of the crowds which arrived as we departed. It was a good thing that we came early because the bus-loads of other people would have ruined the special moments we had there!

After we left the Redwoods we went on our tour of wine country. We drove up to Sonoma Valley and then to Napa Valley and back to Sonoma Valley. We'd chosen four vineyards to do wine tastings at and we'd also signed up for a family tour at the Beringer Vineyard. It seemed like there were hundreds of vineyards in the valley, so it was probably a good thing that we picked a specific four to taste at and took our time at each of them. None of them were particularly stingy with their samples. The boys weren't entirely bored, either. There were places for them to play, gift shops to paw through, and some pretty entertaining sights.

The boys also joined us on a short tour of the Beringer Vinyards and a tour through the original Beringer house at the site of their original processing plant. The vineyard tour was interesting and well-narrated by one of the employees and included some tastings. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in their cool tunnels. The Beringer house was built in the late 1800's and was a showpiece of magnificent woodcrafting and glass. They lived exceptionally well......even by todays standards.

This was a nice laid-back day and we thoroughly enjoyed it!