Owl Trail and Mt.Tam

We didn't make it to the Owl Trail on Monday, and I can't live with something not completed (ask Rachel about the Angels Landing hike, for example), and I'm impatientcowmoooo, so on Saturday, February 26, we packed up the van and headed out to what is quickly becoming my favorite part of California--the Marin County coast. By the way, my mom couldn't make it, but we recruited our friends the Opps to come along with us.

We arrived at the Muir Beach Overlook and Meghan quickly made her way out to the observation point to check out the view.

This is the reason it's called the Muir Beach Overlook. On the left (south? side) was Muir Beach. You can see a little bit of it here. You can also see a little bit of the house of one of the most fortunate people in the world. Can you imagine having a house with that kind of a view?

This is one of a few bunkers that served as observation posts for the army during World War II.

There was a trail that led around to some picnic tables and on the way was this cool tree pictured above and this bunker style room with a picnic table inside it. It was like a secret hide out/nuclear holocaust bunker, cool and kind of creepy at the same time.

I'm poking my head out of the secret hide out. I'm guessing this is for ventilation.

  I'm pretty sure Wes was considering joining Lennon and Meghan, but decided not to show them up.

After determining the correct direction, we made our way to the trail and started our hike. After a few minutes, we saw our first sign of Slide Ranch, what they call the geodesic Dome and family camp site area.

As we got closer, we saw the animals at Slide Ranch. Meghan was very disappointed that we couldn't go pet these sheep.

The trail to the beach takes a detour through Slide Ranch property, which was kind of weird, because they had some kind of a family day thing going on and I felt kind of like a freeloader walking through their property, but hey what are you gonna do?

Here are some of the non freeloaders at the Slide Ranch Yurt. Across from the yurt was a stairway to nowhere, and apparently that's where Meghan wanted to go.

 

The view from the yurt (and its surrounding picnic tables) was pretty nice, so we  got back on the trail.

Here are Wes and Jen Opp.

Once we got to the beach, we had a great time exploring and found some cool stuff. Here's what we saw:

pelagic cormorant

The shell in the middle is hiding a hermit crab

See the blue ish claw?

This guy (rock crab) was not living when we found him.

black oystercatcher

After we'd been there long enough, we turned around and headed back.

foreshadowing of a surprise ending

After a hot chocolate break, we got back in the van and made our way to the east peak of Mt Tam, which had some great views.

view from a pull out on the way up. We just had to stop--to take pictures and clean up a hot chocolate spill

My first panorama. The Golden Gate is peeking out right in the middle. Click on it if you don't believe me. Click on it anyway, it's awesome.

I'm not really sure why, but look-outs really excite me. I think it's because of Jack Kerouc's Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels. So when I saw this (pic below), I knew we were going on one last hike. Luckily, we still had a few Hot Tamales and a whole package of Wonka sour gummy something, so I had some negotiating power. (Plus the hike was only .3 miles, not even a hike really.)

A few sections of the trail had a little ice on them

The view from the top. (Actually, just a small part of it.)

We had a great trip and when we got home and I opened up the front door, there in the corner of the entry way were my hiking boots, right where I had left them.