marin minitour (day 1 of 3)

Emily and I toured Marin to celebrate thanksgiving and take advantage of the break from normal obligations.

We started at the Embarcadero BART and rode across the bridge.


Emily winding her way through the wet forests around Samuel P Taylor State Park. We rode up camino alto on the east flank of Mt. Tamalpais, to connect into Sir Frances Drake to the North. Being Thanksgiving, the small tourist strips around Sausalito and Mill Valley were a bit surreal--there was no typical traffic and all the parking spots were empty. The neighborhoods smelled of the day, as well.


At Samuel P Taylor, we found this hike/bike site in the midst of a single redwood grove.


This was the only entrance to our site


Looking up.


The thanksgiving table. Our meal was interrupted by about 10 hungry raccoons who would climb the trees and peer down at us. You can see the mist in the air in the background, too.


We took a night hike down to the stream running through the valley. The forest floor was covered in mushrooms. I used a headlamp to illuminate this long exposure.


As a sidenote, this marks the first post hosted from flickr. I'm resizing photos before I upload, which allows me to avoid the issues with blurriness endemic to picasa's resizing script. The sharpness and quality of the photography is now as it should be. There are a few photos not shown here, but viewable there, as well.