Wine Country and Redwoods Escape

Wine Country & Redwoods One Day Tour - Times Approximate
(15 Passenger Van or mini-bus)

Expected Days of Operation:
January 2 - December 31 Closed: New Years Day January 1st, and Christmas Day December 25th

Coastal Redwood Sequoias. Giant Evergreens were “discovered” by the Spaniards, along with the rest of the land known as California, back in the mid-1500’s soon after the discovery of the bay which gained the name Monterey (mountain of the king). Soon, they were commonly called Redwoods, both for the reddish brown bark, and the similarly colored heartwood; both due to a high concentration of a class of chemicals commonly called tannins. Their size and the environment in which they live, and to a large extent help to create, have been entrancing people privileged to see them for thousands of years. At first, builders thought them to be inferior to other construction softwoods, but eventually they realized that structures built from Redwood lasted much longer, and vast fortunes - and much of the state’s infrastructure and housing - were built using lumber cut from these huge trees. During this time, they were studied by scientists who discovered several unique properties. Counting the rings revealed trunk ages ranging to 2000 years, field measurements showed diameters up to 21 feet (7 meters) and heights ranging from 250 to 350 feet (80 to 110 meters) and gave them the scientific name Sequoia sempervirens (after a famous Native Chief and the Latin words for “always living”.) Millions of acres have been harvested by methods that were anything but sustainable. After inhabiting most of the earth’s continents and regions for most of the last 100 million years, a 50-mile wide strip of California coastline ranging about 400 miles from the Oregon border to south of Monterey is their only natural home today. They are fast growing trees, and there are many parks and other protected areas where they have been growing largely undisturbed since being logged over 100 years ago, but only about 5% of the original ancient forests remain untouched. Muir Woods is such a place.

Muir Woods.  Even though it was only about 15 miles from the heart of the growing city of San Francisco the approaches were so steep, and Redwoods, so plentiful elsewhere, that the laws of economics allowed them to remain standing while forests much further away were decimated. The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 changed all that, because 250,000 people were suddenly homeless and shopping for lumber to rebuild. If not for the great fortune of William and Elizabeth Kent purchasing 295 acres just a few years earlier, and then fighting to keep the large timber companies and local governments from seizing their property, there would not be a Muir Wood today. After local courts had ruled against them, they found recourse in the Oval Office, as they donated the land to the Federal Government and President Theodore Roosevelt declared the land a National Monument in 1908, following the Kent’s wishes to name if after revered naturalist John Muir. Today it is one of the most-visited sites outside of San Francisco in the Bay Area, in the neighborhood of 800,000 visits per year.