You can't leave California without hugging a Redwood and one of the best places to channel your inner Grizzly Adams is Muir Woods which sits just north of San Francisco. Because it sits just north of San Francisco, and is very popular with the granola eaters from the Bay area, you need to get there just as the park opens or you won't be getting any feelings of solitude as you bond with nature. We managed to get in before it was officially open so we had a great time and were relatively alone with the red giants. As we were leaving it was obvious that there were no parking spots available and people were reduced to circling and hoping for the best (they have implemented weekend shuttle buses from San Francisco to help alleviate the problem). It's probably a good thing that the popularity of the park will ensure its long term existence particularly since the early migrants to the Bay were largely responsible for almost wiping out this majestic tree. When gold was discovered in 1849, hundreds of thousands of people came to California, and redwoods were logged extensively to satisfy the explosive demand for lumber and resources. Today, only 5 percent of the original old-growth coast redwood forest remains, along a 450-mile coastal strip. Most of the coast redwood forest is now young.

After hours of peaceful tree hugging it was time to bond with a different type of nature that could peck your eyes out. Further up the coast in Bodega Bay and surrounds are a number of locations used by Alfred Hitchcock when he was filming his famous Birds movie. The schoolhouse that was surrounded by thousands of murderous crows is still there but is now a private residence (with an owner who is more than a little jaded to Hitchcock fans stopping by to take photos of his house), and the restaurant where the residents who hadn't been pecked to death gathered to plot their escape, has been heavily modernized. There's a couple of addition sites but given that the movie was made in 1963, the townsfolk don't play up the movie theme very much. We had to spin up a couple of YouTube clips as a reminder of just how good this movie was despite the woeful special effects.

After carefully checking the hydro wires for any suspicious bird grouping, DH pointed Billy Thunder in the direction of the Avenue of the Giants.