South of San Francisco in the town of Woodside, one can step back in time to an earlier era of refinement and luxury. Filoli Gardens is a place where one can imagine life of a bygone era. Visitors can explore a large mansion built in 1917 in which only two families have lived. They can also explore the beautiful gardens around the home. Of course none of this comes free, but if one is willing to pay the price, they…
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In the middle of San Francisco Bay lies one of the most infamous locations in America, Alcatraz. I remember as a kid hearing about Alcatraz and that the really bad criminals went there. In 1963 the government closed the prison, but even after that the stories continued to circulate. Today Alcatraz is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area managed by the National Parks and is open to the public. To visit Alcatraz visitors must get a ticket from…
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One of the reasons I wanted to go to the San Francisco area was to visit Muir Woods. Muir Woods is a US National Monument. I wrote about national monuments in a previous post. Muir Woods is one I had read about and wanted to explore. It took us about two hours to drive north from where Andrea lives to reach Muir Woods. The drive took us over the Golden Gate Bridge, and shortly after crossing we turned west. We…
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Silicon Valley conjures up images of high tech companies in shiny buildings with busy employees working far too much. We sometimes forget that word valley. A valley is an area between hills or mountains, and Silicon Valley sits near some hills which have been preserved for the valley citizens to enjoy and experience nature. One such location is Rancho San Antonio which is an open space preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains west of the valley. Here visitors will find…
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After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast at our hotel, we were ready to begin our second day around Death Valley. It was another clear blue-sky day which started out cold, but quickly warmed up with the sun. Our first experience when we arrived in Death Valley was a drive through the hills on the east side of the Black Mountains. The drive is called Twenty Mule Team Canyon Road. Those of you who are older might be…
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I realized recently that I have been to almost all of the national parks in California. Only two remained, Death Valley and Sequoia & Kings Canyon. I had tried for a few year to make it to Death Valley, but no one would go with me. Finally I convinced my wife to go, and so we began to plan our adventure. Death Valley has hit 130 degrees twice in the last few years. This of course was during the summer…
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As the world started to fall apart in February 2020, I was all but certain it would not impact our trip to Belgium and The Netherlands. April was a couple of months away, and there was plenty of time for things to settle down. As we all know now, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Two years later we decided to try again. This time, however, there was a little more apprehension. Would we have to quarantine upon arrival? Where…
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During these last few years of COVID anxiety, National Parks have been more popular than ever as people try to avoid crowds and stay outside. Previously I have shared about the ones that I have been able to visit, and you can find those posts here. In March I shared about the lesser known National Historical Parks. Today I want to focus on another list of possible places to visit this summer, National Monuments. If you hear monument, you might…
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Redwood National and State Parks is more than just the redwood trees in its names. While the trees are often the star, the parks covers a lot of territory so a visit will allow you to see more than just trees. On our second day in the park we saw trees, but we saw more as well. During our first stop of the day, we saw no redwoods. We would take a fairly short hike around the Yurok Loop. The…
Redwood National Park is an interesting connection of both state and national parks. In fact the official name is Redwood National and State Parks. We traveled to the northern most section of the parks, Crescent City, and continued our exploration of the redwood area from there. After a hearty breakfast on Tuesday, we were ready to hit the forest. Our first park was Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. We were headed to a popular trail called the Boy Scout Trail.…
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